TechZone Grid Pulse is a one-person consulting practice based in Ottawa. Susan Dunmore works with small and mid-size Canadian businesses on infrastructure, cloud migration, and IT strategy. No jargon, no bloated proposals.
Established since 2019 · 304-245 Sparks Street, Ottawa, ON K1P 5B9
Fixed-scope pricing is not the default in consulting because it transfers risk from the client to the consultant....
About this practice
Susan Dunmore spent eleven years inside large technology organisations before starting TechZone Grid Pulse in 2019. The last of those roles was as a senior infrastructure lead at a federal government contractor in Gatineau, where she managed a team responsible for migrating legacy systems across three departments. The work was interesting. The bureaucracy around it was not. She left in the spring of 2019 with a clear idea of what she wanted to build: a practice small enough to stay honest.
The first two years were mostly word of mouth, which suited her. A referral from a manufacturing client in Hamilton led to a six-month engagement with a logistics company in Mississauga, which led to a security review for a law firm in downtown Ottawa. By 2021 the practice had settled into a rhythm: three or four active clients at a time, a mix of project work and monthly advisory, and a deliberate policy of not taking on more than she could give proper attention to. That policy has not changed.
I left because I wanted to build something small enough to stay honest.
Services and fees
IT Strategy ReviewA structured audit of your current technology stack, vendor contracts, and internal...From $3,800 CAD
Cloud Migration PlanningAssessment of on-premise infrastructure and a phased migration plan to AWS, Azure, or...From $5,200 CAD
Vendor Selection SupportStructured RFP process, shortlist evaluation, and contract review for software or...From $2,400 CAD
Fractional CTO (Monthly)Ongoing technology leadership for businesses that do not need a full-time CTO....$2,200 CAD / month
Security Posture AssessmentA review of access controls, backup procedures, software update cadence, and staff...From $2,900 CAD
One-Day WorkshopA focused working session for your leadership team on a single technology decision or...$1,800 CAD
Currently reading
The Real World of Technology
Ursula Franklin
Re-reading it slowly. The chapter on prescriptive versus holistic technologies keeps coming up in client conversations.
Contact us
The best first step is a short call. Use the booking link to pick a time that works, or send an email if you prefer to start in writing. Susan replies to every message within one business day.
Susan handles every engagement personally. No handoffs to a junior analyst after the first meeting, no account managers in between.
02
Fixed-scope proposals
Every project starts with a written scope document. The price in that document is the price you pay. Overruns are absorbed, not invoiced.
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Plain-language reporting
Deliverables are written for the person who runs the business, not for an IT department. If a sentence needs a glossary, it gets rewritten.
With respect
What clients have said
“
Susan handed us a report we could actually read. We had been through two other consultants before her both times we got slide decks that nobody looked at after the meeting.
Martin Okafor · Operations Director, Ottawa
“
The fixed-price proposal was the thing that made us say yes. We had been burned before by hourly billing that ran three times the estimate.
Diane Tremblay · Owner, Tremblay & Associates, Montreal
A few words from clients. Every project is different, and so are outcomes.
News & Announcements
News & Announcements
2026-06-16
What to look for in an IT consulting contract before you sign
A stack of papers arrives in your inbox, labelled something like "Master Services Agreement" or "Consulting Engagement Terms," and your instinct — because you are busy, and because the consultant seems trustworthy, and because lawyers are expensive — is to scroll to the signature line and move on. That instinct is almost always wrong, not dramatically wrong, but quietly, expensively wrong in the way that only becomes visible six months later when the project has drifted into territory nobody budgeted for. The clauses that matter in an IT consulting contract are not the ones that look alarming. They are the ones that look boring: the scope definition, the change order language, the IP ownership paragraph, the liability cap buried somewhere near the end. This piece walks through each of them, in plain language, so that the next time a document lands in your inbox you know exactly where to look and what questions to ask before you pick up a pen.
How to run a vendor selection process when you are not a technical buyer
Most vendor selection processes go wrong before the first demo is even booked. The non-technical buyer, usually a founder, operations manager, or department head, sends a rough brief to three vendors, watches three polished presentations, and then chooses the one whose salesperson they liked best. That is not a process; it is expensive guesswork dressed in calendar invites. What follows is the approach I have seen work repeatedly for organizations that have real operational needs and no dedicated IT function to lean on, written plainly enough that you can adapt it to a CRM search, a warehouse management system, a fleet-tracking platform, or almost any software or hardware procurement you are facing right now. The goal is to give you enough structure to make a defensible, genuinely informed decision, even if you cannot read a line of code or interpret a system architecture diagram.
When a fractional CTO makes sense and when it does not
The decision to bring in a fractional CTO is rarely made with full information, and I say that not as a criticism but as an observation about how technology leadership actually gets procured in practice. A founder discovers the term, reads a few LinkedIn posts, and begins to wonder whether the gap they are feeling — between what the engineering team is doing and what the business needs it to do — is exactly the gap this arrangement is meant to fill. Sometimes it is. Sometimes what they actually need is a single, well-scoped engagement with a clear deliverable, and a fractional relationship would be expensive scaffolding around a problem that does not require it. I want to try to draw that line as honestly as I can, because I have been on both sides of it, and because the distinction matters more than most consultants will tell you.
Answer three questions and Susan will point you toward the most relevant starting point. No contact details required.
Owner
The hands behind it
Founder, Established since 2019
Susan Dunmore
Susan Dunmore founded TechZone Grid Pulse in Ottawa in 2019 after eleven years in enterprise technology, most recently as a senior infrastructure lead at a federal government contractor in Gatineau. She holds a background in network architecture and cloud systems, and has worked across manufacturing, legal, logistics, and professional services sectors. She writes most of the articles on this site herself, usually early in the morning before client calls start. She is currently working through a backlog of notes from a cloud governance engagement that wrapped up in June 2026, and is reading Ursula Franklin's "The Real World of Technology" for the second time.
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Get in touch
Tell Susan what you are working on
Fill in the form and Susan will reply within one business day with a few clarifying questions or a suggested time to talk. No proposal will be sent unless you ask for one.
