How We Work: Forward Deployed Engineers | ESGAgent.ai
How we work

Software that arrives
with engineers.

We deploy sustainability and safety engineers who build your exact workflow into the platform, automate the grind, and leave your team owning only the decisions that matter.

Book a free 15 min demo→ ▶Watch the 90-second demo
The model

60/30/10: who does what.

Today your team does 100% of this. Under the 60/30/10 model, the platform does the chasing, reading, mapping and drafting; our engineers run the specialist work; our advisors shape your systems and workflows against world-class benchmarks. Same output, a fraction of the hours, and a full evidence trail behind every number.

60%
Platform
30%
Engineers
10%
Advisory
60% Platform

The volume work is automated end to end: data ingestion from source systems and portals, evidence collection and chasing, document reading and extraction, obligation mapping, compliance scoring, report drafting, audit trail assembly. This runs continuously, not at reporting season.

30% ESGAgent engineers

Our forward deployed sustainability and safety engineers configure the workflows, tune the validations to your operation, handle the specialist analysis (scenario modelling, boundary determinations, methodology decisions) and keep the system aligned as legislation and your business change.

10% Expert advisory

We help you shape your systems and workflows based on world-class benchmarks and how global companies work.

80–90%
Disclosure drafts arrive 80 to 90% complete for client review, with every number tracing to source documents.
Automation philosophy

Machines absorb the volume.
People own the judgment.

AI filters, highlights and structures. Engineers interpret, decide and certify. Nothing becomes a validated record without human sign-off.

Layer 1 — Does it exist and is it mapped?
Fully automated

Every obligation in the framework mapped against your documents in hours, not weeks. Zero human time spent discovering that a document is missing.

Layer 2 — Is it adequate for your specific operation?
Platform + expert judgment

AI scores against validation criteria tuned to your site's reality (your mining method, your materials, your asset class) and experts review what the AI flags.

Layer 3 — Is it implemented and effective on the ground?
Human-led, platform-evidenced

Field verification and effectiveness calls stay with people; the platform structures, tracks and preserves the evidence.

The platform doesn't just store evidence, it reads it. Documents citing superseded guidance get rejected with step-by-step reasoning, configurable scrutiny levels, document hashing and a full audit trail, with human review on request.

AI native vs traditional

How AI native companies compare to the traditional way

The usual option 01
Software vendors

Hand you a login and a help centre, and your team becomes the integration project.

The usual option 02
Consultancies

Embed people forever, because their revenue is the hours.

What we do instead

ESGAgent deploys forward deployed sustainability and safety engineers: domain experts in ESG reporting, carbon accounting, safety and assurance who also build on the platform. They sit with your team, learn how your operation runs, and configure the workflows to match it exactly, automating each step as they go. The goal of the deployment is to make themselves progressively unnecessary for the routine work.

What a forward deployed engineer does in practice
Maps your current process end to end, including the workarounds nobody wrote down
Configures obligations, controls, validations and report templates to your exact frameworks, sites and systems
Connects your data sources (ERP, fuel systems, utility portals, lab systems, contractor submissions) so ingestion is automatic
Tunes AI validation criteria with your subject matter experts so the flags are meaningful, not noisy
Runs the first cycles alongside your team, then hands over a running system
Domain-first, by design: ESG PhDs, ex-Big 4 and legal risk advisory practitioners, and safety professionals who have held statutory roles, not implementation contractors reading from a manual.
Built in situ

How a deployment runs.

01
Discover on your real work.
We start from your actual documents, spreadsheets and last submission, not a template. If your emissions model lives in Excel, we ingest that exact model as the starting point. If your field data lives in handwritten test records, we start from those.
02
Build with your experts in the room.
Working screens go in front of your team early and get redesigned around their feedback. On one recent build, the entire product was reorganised around a field engineer's observation that the job was really about controls and reports, not progress tracking. That redesign took weeks, because the engineers building it were in the room.
03
Verify before the field opens.
Specifications and criteria are loaded and tested against the framework before live capture begins (the “unit test against the spec” step) so stale parameters and gaps surface on day one, not in the audit.
04
Run parallel, measure, graduate.
The system runs alongside your existing process for a full cycle. When it beats the old way on time and quality, measured directly, it becomes the way.
Controls, evidence and daily reporting assembling live in the platform, built in situ rather than configured from a manual.
The parallel pilot

Prove it before you commit.

“We'll run one quarter next to your current process. You compare the hours and the quality. If we don't win, you've lost nothing.”

✓12 weeks — one site or one reporting cycle
✓Parallel to your existing process — nothing is at risk, and the comparison is measured directly
✓Aligned to your review cadence — e.g. a quarterly data cycle, so the time saving shows in your own numbers
✓Fixed fee — credited toward year one if you proceed
✓Acceptance criteria written down first — success is defined in advance, not argued afterwards
See what this looks like in your industry
Mining → Food & Agriculture → Construction & Infrastructure → Energy & Utilities → Property & Real Estate →

The obligation is heavy.
Carrying it shouldn't be.

Book a free 15 min demo→ Talk to a forward deployed engineer →