Last updated: October 24, 2026
Write three named deliverables into a data contractor’s scope before day one: a source inventory by week 2, a reconciled pipeline by week 6, and a documented handoff by week 12, each tied to a record and one sign-off owner.
Bill it hourly. KORE1 IT contract assignments run a median 136 days, about two quarters of work. The scope has to survive longer than the kickoff call does.
A scope I saw this year had three lines: an hourly rate, a start date, and the sentence “data engineering support for the finance team.” Nothing else. Ninety days later the contractor said the work was on track. The hiring manager said it didn’t look like ninety days of anything. Both were telling the truth. The document they’d signed never said what “on track” meant. That argument happens around week ten, almost on schedule, because nobody wrote down what would exist and when, in a form either of them could point to later.
KORE1 earns a fee placing the seat this scope describes, through its contract data engineer desk. I built this list with its staffing consultants. Check it against your own deal before you sign anything. One note first: this is written for a fund or carrier bringing on one hourly contractor, not a vendor team that shows up with its own project manager and its own deliverables process. KORE1’s contractor onboarding checklist covers the week before this one, access and introductions. This page starts after that.
What Should a Data Contractor Deliver by Week 2, Week 6 and Week 12?
Three things show up on this scope. Each one is due on a specific week.
Week 2 is a source inventory. That means a list, not a slide, with one row for every feed, file, and hand-keyed entry the seat is going to touch, usually fifteen to twenty rows. A few files still arrive by email as a spreadsheet. A few get pulled by hand from a fund administrator’s portal because nobody ever provisioned an API key. The rest move through pipes somebody built years ago under a system owner who’s since left, half of them undocumented. No inventory in two weeks means no grip on the environment yet. Nothing after that point can be trusted. It’s a guess wearing code.
Weeks 3 through 5 don’t owe you a deliverable. That’s build time. Asking for a document in the middle of it just slows the build down.
Week 6 is a reconciled pipeline: one scheduled output, landing on a number your own team already trusts, exactly, across every fund or line of business it touches, not just the three easiest ones. The usual gap is a currency rate, a stale join key, or a field two source systems define slightly differently under the hood. SOC 2 and SOX walkthroughs ask for exactly this kind of reconciliation evidence later anyway. Finding the gap in week 6 is cheaper than finding it as an audit exception in the first quarter.
Week 12 is the deliverable most buyers forget to name, and it’s the one that costs the most once it’s missing. It means a documented handoff: a runbook, a source-to-target map, a list of what’s still broken, and one supervised run where your staff drives and the contractor only answers questions. Skip any piece of that and it isn’t a handoff. It’s a goodbye with an invoice stapled to it.
What Record Does Each Deliverable Reconcile To?
Read the record, not the resume. Each of the three deliverables fails the same way if you skip one question. Checked against what? A source inventory with no second list to compare it to is just the contractor’s word for it. A pipeline with no number to land on is a demo, however good it looks in a screen share. Pick the record before week one starts, not after week 6 when someone finally asks.
For the inventory, the record is whatever system list your IT or operations team already half-maintains. If that list doesn’t really exist yet, that’s fine. Say so up front. The inventory the contractor produces becomes the record, and that alone is worth the first six weeks of billing. For the pipeline, the record is a number your finance or actuarial team already signs off on by hand today: a fund administrator statement, a trade file, a reserve run. The new pipeline can’t invent its own number. It has to earn trust against the old one, or explain the gap to the dollar.
The handoff’s record isn’t a document at all. It’s a person who didn’t write the pipeline, running it cold from the steps on the page, while the contractor’s own access gets revoked on the same schedule a SOC 2 access review would expect. That overstates the test slightly. A couple of smaller checks matter too. Still, it’s most of it. People skip it because it costs an afternoon somebody would rather spend on something that feels more finished.
Who Signs Off, and What Counts as Done?
One name belongs on each deliverable. Not a team. Not “the business,” which is the phrase people use when they mean nobody in particular. Usually that’s whoever owns the system list for the inventory, whoever already signs off on the number for the pipeline (a controller, an actuary, a portfolio ops lead, depending on the shop), and the hiring manager for the handoff, because the hiring manager is still there in month four after everyone else has moved on. Write three names on the scope. Not three roles.
The federal government has an entire part of its acquisition rules built around this exact gap, which is a strange place to find a useful model for a staffing SOW. A contract that pays for hours instead of a finished product still needs a separate, written test for when the work is actually done, or the buyer pays hourly rates indefinitely with nothing specific to show for a given stretch of them. Part 46 of the Federal Acquisition Regulation calls that inspection and acceptance. The private-sector version is smaller, but the shape holds. Write the acceptance test in advance. “A staff analyst reruns the week 6 pipeline from the runbook, unassisted, and gets the same total within a dollar” is a test. “Looks good to the team” is a feeling. It doesn’t hold up in month four.
Which Funded Data Deliverables Cannot Slide Into 2027?
Some of this work has a date attached that has nothing to do with the contract’s own clock. A fund closing its books ahead of first-quarter LP reporting. A carrier’s actuarial team preparing experience data for a model audit that lands on the regulator’s examination schedule, not the contractor’s. A year-end NAIC filing that needs clean data ready in November, not the week the filing is actually due. If a piece of this scope is funded out of a budget that expires on December 31, say so on the first page, with the real date next to it. Not “year-end.” The date.
A contractor who starts in November on a clean ninety-day scope lands in February. Usually that’s fine. It isn’t fine if February was supposed to be January. Sequence the weeks around the calendar the business actually runs on. The 30-60-90 split is a convenience. It’s not a law of nature, and a regulator has no interest in which week of your internal plan a deliverable was originally due.
How Do You Write an Hourly Scope Without Turning It Into a Fixed-Fee Project?
Devin Hornick, a partner here, put it plainly on a call with our team this fall. “In the SOW world, this is just a hiring manager with a budget, going outside and hiring something and saying, I have this to get done and I need you to do it… a certain amount of hours based on that budget.”
The FAR has a name for that arrangement: time-and-materials. Paid by the hour at a fixed rate. Directed day to day by the buyer. No fixed price on the finished output. Government contracting officers draw that line carefully, because real money sits on either side of it. The line matters here too, for a quieter reason. The week 2, 6 and 12 deliverables in this scope are checkpoints. Your manager reviews them and decides whether the engagement is working. They are not invoice triggers.
Attach a dollar figure to “week 6 pipeline delivered” and the arrangement quietly turns into something closer to a fixed-fee project, with different legal exposure and a different answer to who actually directs the work day to day. Your manager still runs that part. The deliverables just tell everyone whether the direction is going somewhere. That’s a different job. KORE1’s SOW staffing services desk prices this correctly when the written scope and the invoice actually agree with each other, which happens less often than most buyers would guess.
What Should the Handoff Package Contain When the Contract Ends?
Three pieces make up the handoff, and each one deserves a closer look, because this is where most ninety-day engagements quietly come apart. A runbook, written for someone who has never seen the code, with every step numbered and tested by having that someone run it cold. A source-to-target map naming which field in which system becomes which column in which output, so nobody has to reverse-engineer the logic from the code itself six months later. A known-issues list, written down instead of discovered later, naming the data problems the contractor found and didn’t fix because fixing them wasn’t in scope. A typical list has three or four items on it: a currency rate that needs a manual override once a quarter, a field two systems define slightly differently, a schedule gap around a holiday close. None of that is a crisis. Write it down anyway. The next person who touches that pipeline needs the context, not just the fact that someone already knows about it.
Then there’s the proof: one full run, start to finish, your own person at the keyboard, the contractor there only to answer questions. If your staff member can’t get through it without the contractor taking the mouse back, the handoff isn’t finished. Don’t let the week 12 invoice say otherwise.
If this work is becoming permanent instead of staying on contract, price a fractional data team against a full-time hire before the ninety days run out, not during week thirteen when the contractor is already gone.
The Scope, as a Table
| Week | Deliverable | Reconciles To | Sign-Off Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week 2 | Source inventory: every feed, file, and manual entry this seat touches | The existing system list, or it becomes that list if none exists | Head of data or operations |
| Week 6 | Reconciled pipeline: one scheduled output matched to a trusted number | The number finance or ops already signs off on by hand | Controller, actuary, or portfolio ops lead, whoever owns that number today |
| Week 12 | Documented handoff: runbook, source-to-target map, known-issues list, plus one supervised run | The runbook itself, tested against a staff member who didn’t build it | Hiring manager |
KORE1 · Contract Staffing
Staff this scope. Hand KORE1’s desk the three deliverables above and tell our staffing solutions team what you need. It sources the data contractor against them.
Price the staffing model separately from the deliverables before you sign anything. Contract staffing is the arrangement most buyers use for a seat like this one.
What People Ask Before They Write This Scope
So how long does an engagement like this actually run?
A median of 136 days for KORE1’s IT contract assignments, and 116 days across every role KORE1 places on contract.
Ninety days of named deliverables inside a 116-to-136-day assignment isn’t short. It’s typical. Most of what runs past day 90 is an extension earned by the first three deliverables landing on time, not scope creep nobody noticed.
What happens if the scope changes halfway through?
Write the change against the same table: new date, same sign-off owner, instead of letting it happen only out loud on a status call.
Ninety days of data work that never changes scope at all is rare enough to be suspicious. What actually kills a deal is a change nobody wrote down, so that six weeks later two people remember the same conversation two different ways.
Who ends up owning the code and the documentation once the contract ends?
You do, in writing, from day one, as a line in the master services agreement.
That’s not something the week 12 handoff package decides on its own. It’s not something to negotiate after the contractor has already left. Say it before anyone starts. The handoff becomes paperwork instead of a fight.
Pull your own last SOW. Count the deliverables in it, by name, not by implication. If the number is zero, you have company. Want to compare notes with someone who’s read a few? Connect with me on LinkedIn.
