Twenty weeks, six phases, three payments

Monday 19 October 2026 to Friday 5 March 2027, 964 hours. Absorb is switched off on Friday 29 January 2027, with five weeks after it for the media studio, the tutor and buffer.

Fixed price

$105k

plus GST, in three payments

Hours budgeted

964

about 48 a week

Absorb switched off

29 Jan

end of week 15

Buffer

2 wk

weeks 19 and 20

Phases by week

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A. Foundations19 to 30 Oct, 110 h

B. Course engine and Studio2 to 27 Nov, 212 h

C. Assessment and learners30 Nov to 18 Dec, 142 h

D. Commerce, reporting, ILT, migration21 Dec to 15 Jan, 204 h

E. UAT and cutover18 to 29 Jan, 68 h

F. Media studio, tutor, polish1 Feb to 5 Mar, 228 h

Holiday weeksno daily client input needed

Design sign-off lands by 30 October, the end of week 2.

What each phase ships

Phase	Weeks	Ships	Hours
A. Design sign-off and foundations	1 to 2	Design signed off, Absorb export tested, the Laravel app with tenants, roles and SSO, Railway staging.	110
B. Course engine and Studio	3 to 6	Courses and versions, the board and outline, rules, the AI generator, the editors, the player, token wallets, the component runtime.	212
C. Assessment and learners	7 to 9	Question banks and exams, remediation, slide sessions, the learner portal, certificates. Staging release 18 Dec, payment 2	142
D. Commerce, reporting, ILT, migration	10 to 13	Sessions and sign-off, reporting, Stripe, GST and Xero, the API and standards, branding, migration dry run.	204
E. UAT and cutover	14 to 15	UAT on migrated data, parallel run, completion record check, security and WCAG review, admin training. Absorb switched off 29 Jan, payment 3	68
F. Media studio, tutor, polish	16 to 20	Hypercare, translation tracks, narration and video rendering, the media library, AI builds in the component studio, the tutor, buffer.	228
Total			964

Payments

Before 19 Oct: Deposit, $35k plus GST on signing.
18 Dec 2026: Staging, $35k plus GST when the client can log in with their own courses, learners and exams.
29 Jan 2027: Go-live, $35k plus GST when Absorb is switched off and the completion records are signed off.

What the client supplies, and when

19 Oct, week 1: Absorb admin access and a full export, the renewal date, the course list.
30 Oct, week 2: Design sign-off, brand assets, source material for three real courses, and a subject matter expert 4 hours a week from week 4.
11 Dec, week 8: All course content and question banks for cutover, the employer list, Stripe, Xero, prices and certificate templates.
15 Jan, week 13: Language reviewers (Tagalog and Punjabi at least) and 3 to 5 UAT testers.
18 to 29 Jan: UAT testers daily, and sign-off of the migrated completion records.

Risks

Absorb Create courses may not export cleanly, so source material is due in week 2 and the generator rebuilds from it.
The board is the most novel UI, so the outline view ships first and the engine never waits on it.
Ten question types is wide, so hotspot and scenario land last and can slip to phase F.
Completion history is a compliance record, so Absorb stays read only until the record check is signed off.
Translation quality depends on reviewers, so the buffer weeks absorb any slip.

Decided on 14 October

Test out per course. English first, then Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Tagalog and Mandarin. Licensed standards are uploaded by each tenant. Desktop and tablet for learners, desktop for admin. Regulatory data is always verified by a person, never AI. Markdown for all authors with design guardrails. No gamification.