Engagements
Four ways to put a fractional COO on your defense floor.
Each is scoped to the constraint you are fighting: a fixed-scope diagnostic, an embedded fractional COO, a consultancy aimed at one event, or investor readiness before a raise. Every path opens with a strategic conversation, not a pitch.
Featured collaboration
Investor Readiness | A Patent-Protected Plug-and-Play Electrical System
An Investor Readiness engagement: the prototype-to-scale operation and diligence case behind a patent-protected hardware system, the same work whether the hardware is a defense sensor or an electrical architecture.
The challenge
The $270B+ U.S. electrical construction industry still runs on century-old manual wiring, driving project delays, a worsening skilled-labor shortage, and material waste.
The solution
A modular, direct-connect electrical system under a granted U.S. utility patent that turns manual wiring into rapid mechanical plug-and-play assembly, the shift PEX brought to plumbing.
Operational impact
- Velocity8 to 10× faster component installation; breaker-panel install projected from 8 to 10 hours to roughly one hour.
- LaborAbout a 50 percent reduction in total jobsite electrical labor.
- MaterialsAbout a 20 percent reduction in copper routing waste.
Prototype-tested and internally modeled targets. The system is pre-market, with UL certification the remaining gate.
Garrett Partridge LLC value add
Advises the founder on operational evaluation, technology positioning, and pre-funding alignment: the diligence-ready operation that carries prototype validation toward commercial market entry.
The engagements
Pick the depth the situation calls for.
30-Day Operational Triage
The full diagnostic. A defensible written plan in thirty days.
The owner who knows something is eating capacity but cannot name it, and needs a plan, not another opinion.
Roughly five weeks at twenty hours a week, on-site for the floor work, remote for the analysis. Fixed scope, fixed deliverable.
What you get
- Value stream and swim-lane maps, top of funnel to cash, including the ECO and CAPA workflows where changes stall
- Gemba walks and targeted Kaizen events on the floor
- Leading and lagging metrics across the four pillars: People and Culture, Process, Products and Services, Cash
- Team training on data governance, pull systems, 5S, and the right use of AI
- A report that names the constraint and the sequence to remove it
Fractional COO
Embedded operational leadership without a full-time hire.
The founder drowning in operations who cannot justify a quarter-million-dollar COO or keep running the floor and the board at once.
An ongoing retainer: near full-time for the first 90 days, then a steady fractional cadence as the system holds.
What you get
- Ongoing operational leadership at two to three days a week, embedded with your direct reports
- The full Standard Work 2.0 install across IT and OT, one auditable digital thread from quote to ship
- Real-time SQDIP reporting, quality tracking aligned to your prime's SCAR scorecards, and audit routines that hold after I step back
- Executive mentorship that upskills your technicians into site leaders
- A bridge to the prime and its approved supplier list, from an operator who has been upstream
Strategic Consultancy
Standard Work 2.0 installed against one high-stakes problem.
PE operating partners and leadership teams facing one event: forensic diligence on an acquisition, a 90-day P&L triage, or compliance hardening before a prime gate.
Scoped to the event: a paid, time-boxed working session up to a 30-day stint, firm-fixed-price against a defined deliverable.
What you get
- Forensic operational due diligence that surfaces the risk a financial model misses
- A 90-day P&L triage that cuts production variance and frees trapped working capital
- Compliance hardening for CMMC Level 2, an ITAR data enclave, and a QMS to ISO 9001:2015 or AS9100, built into workflow, not policy
- The 90-Day Strategy Formulation Framework: Phase 1 Diagnostic, Phase 2 Stabilization, Phase 3 Commercial Scale
- A future-state operating model the team runs after the engagement closes
Investor Readiness
The operational case an investor diligences, built before the first meeting.
The hard-tech, deep-tech, or defense-hardware founder with a raise ahead, who can show an investor the product but not yet the operation that scales it.
Two to four weeks, timed to land before your raise opens. It stands alone or rolls into a fractional COO retainer once the round closes and the plan must be built.
What you get
- A diligence-ready operating picture: value-stream and unit-economics maps from prototype to repeatable production, and what each unit costs
- The operational data room a technical investor asks for: scale-up plan, cost-down curve, supply and capacity assumptions, and compliance posture (ITAR, CMMC, AS9100) stated as fact, not intention
- The operator's answer to the question that sinks hardware raises, can you build this at volume, with a plan an investor can pressure-test
- Where the operation would fail diligence today, and the sequence to close each gap before the round opens
- Warm introductions, where the fit is right, to operators, primes, and capital across the New England defense corridor
Capacity
I run a maximum of four concurrent engagements.
Strategic conversations for a full engagement open when an existing engagement reaches Phase 3. That is the real constraint, not a marketing line.
Time-critical situations move faster: a prime supplier letter, an affirmation date you cannot sign behind, an LOI in diligence. Name the trigger and I respond within 48 hours with a realistic window.
Full engagement waitlist
Fractional COO and 30-Day Triage slots open as engagements reach Phase 3. Name your trigger and I respond within 48 hours.
Time-critical? Start with a paid consult, available this week
A paid, time-boxed working session on one problem, no wait for a full slot. When a prime letter, an affirmation date, or an LOI is forcing your timing, it puts the constraint in front of an operator this week.
Start here
Name the trigger. Get a realistic window in 48 hours.
A prime supplier letter, an affirmation date you cannot sign behind, an LOI in diligence. Name yours and I respond within 48 hours with a realistic window.