The first conversation is about the question, not the proposal
Send us the decision in front of your board. The first reply names the version of that question your board can answer in the time it has. It also names the evidence that would settle it, and says whether this is work we should take.
Tell us what the board must decide, and by when
A few lines are enough for a first message. All four of us see what arrives, and a person reads it. Nothing scores it.
Three things that change the first reply
01
The decision, in one sentence
Not the subject, the decision. “Close the northern plant or run it to end of life” is one sentence, and it says more than a briefing pack does. “Generation strategy” names a subject, and it tells us almost nothing.
02
The date the board sits
A full cycle takes eight to twelve weeks. If your vote comes sooner than that, the first reply says so. It names the part that still fits: usually the framing, sometimes the handover on evidence you already hold.
03
What has already been written, and by whom
A previous review, a regulator’s letter, an internal paper that went nowhere. One file reached us as 400 slides from a departed contractor, with no record of the alternatives anywhere in them. Knowing that at the start changes the shape of the work and the price of it.
Two addresses. Post to either one: the sector decides who answers
Anything on paper goes to one of these two. Visits by arrangement, because the two people on a file are not always in the same building.
Harnwick
Financial services and health systems sit here, and so does most of the method writing.
Vessholm
Energy, utilities and public infrastructure sit here, and so does the decision archive.
Since 2019 our files have gone in front of nine sector regulators. Which office you write to changes nothing.
What happens to the message, and what a no looks like
We do not publish a count of working days. The week we could not keep it would be the week you needed it.
01
The one who covers your sector is the one who replies.
02
That reply comes from a person, not from an assistant, and it names what we would need to know before we could answer your question.
03
If there is work here, a call with the two people who would take the file, one of them a partner.
04
If there is not, the same reply says so, and says what we think the question needs instead.
05
Nothing back at all means the message never reached us. Send it again, or write to office@plenary.co.
Four people read this inbox. There is no fifth
No intake team and no account manager. Nobody writes a summary of your message for someone senior to skim. Two of the four sit on every file, and one of them is always a partner. The sector decides which two. All four of us see what arrives. The one who covers your sector writes back, and that person would carry the file.
Mireille Osei
Partner. Energy and utilities.
Sat on an energy regulator’s appeal panel for four years.
Tomas Reinholt
Partner. Health systems.
Built clinical trial protocols before he came to Plenary.
Nadia Fournier
Principal. Financial services.
Writes most of the method the firm works to.
Anders Vik
Principal. Public infrastructure.
Keeps the decision archive, the one cited in cases.
It does not go into the decision archive
It stays with the four of us.
The archive Anders Vik keeps holds the 112 files we have run between 2019 and 2026, and nothing else. We do not add your message to a mailing list, and we do not show it to anyone outside the four people above. Ask us to take it out and we take it out, with a line back to you confirming it.
If nobody has written the paper yet, write anyway
The most useful first conversations we have had were early ones. The paper did not exist, and nobody in the room had settled on an answer. That is the point where framing the question can still change the decision. If you would rather read before you write, the pieces in Insights set out how we work.
What a board actually reads
A board pack is written in the order the work happened. It is read in the order the risk sits, and those two orders are almost never the same.
Mireille Osei, Partner, energy and utilities
How to say what you do not know
Advisers edit the uncertainty out in the final pass, because it reads as weakness. That edit is what makes the material fail at the audit.
Nadia Fournier, Principal, financial services