About Aivance
A founder-led consultancy for AI systems that have to work under pressure.
Aivance helps organisations design and evidence the controls behind AI systems that make decisions and take action. The firm combines enterprise infrastructure experience with practical AI governance architecture.
Why clients come to us
The AI pilot works. The organisation still cannot approve production.
Aivance is brought in when the technology is moving faster than the organisation’s ability to prove that it is controlled.
01 · Deployment
The pilot is stuck.
Risk, compliance, security, or executive approval is blocking the move from successful experiment to production system.
02 · Evidence
The controls are hard to prove.
Policies, committees, and dashboards exist, but nobody has tested whether the controls work when an AI action is already in flight.
03 · Accountability
The intervention question is unanswered.
A board, regulator, customer, or internal risk team wants to know who can stop the system and what evidence exists afterwards.
Why I care about reliable controls
When technology controls something consequential, reliability is not an aspiration.
My entry point into AI was not a boardroom or a consulting project. It was a wheelchair.
In the 1990s, during an internship at the University of Adelaide, I worked on research exploring how neural networks could be used for voice recognition to control wheelchairs. The goal was to give people with physical disabilities greater autonomy over their mobility.
When a system controls something as fundamental as movement, it must be capable of stopping. It needs a hard limit that does not depend on optimistic assumptions about what will probably happen. It must fail safely, not just succeed frequently.
That principle has stayed with me throughout more than thirty years in technology. It is also the principle most AI governance programmes are still missing: the difference between documenting what should happen and designing what the system can actually enforce.
Relevant experience
Enterprise infrastructure experience applied to AI governance.
Aivance approaches governance as an operating and architecture problem, not only as a policy or compliance exercise.
1990s
Assistive AI research
Neural-network research for voice-controlled mobility.
2015–2024
Akamai Technologies
Director of Advanced Consulting Services for Asia-Pacific and Japan.
Earlier career
Enterprise technology
Roles across Ericsson, Nagravision, and Nokia/Alcatel.
2025–now
Aivance Consulting
Founder, designing technically real AI governance controls.
How Aivance works
Small by design. Senior from the first conversation to the final output.
Aivance is a founder-led specialist consultancy. That means direct access, focused scope, and accountability for the work—without a junior consulting layer.
Direct expertise
Every engagement is led directly by Arjen, with the work translated into outputs your technical, risk, and leadership teams can use.
Independent recommendations
Independent assessment is central to the work. Aivance does not resell agent runtimes or certify vendor frameworks. Where a software provider, systems integrator, or specialist partner may be relevant, Aivance explains the fit and discloses any commercial relationship. Assessment conclusions remain grounded in the configured environment, documented evidence, and defined test results.
Partners when required
Legal, security, implementation, or jurisdiction-specific specialists can be brought in when the scope requires them. Their costs and roles are defined separately.
What makes Aivance different
Specific outputs, not another strategy deck.
Policy and enforcement
Governance commitments are connected to technical controls, authority boundaries, and operating evidence.
Built for implementation
Recommendations specify who owns the control, where it operates, how it is tested, and what happens when it fails.
Vendor-neutral
Aivance does not begin with a product. It begins with the control gap and evaluates the most practical way to close it.
Board-ready and team-usable
Every engagement produces an executive explanation and enough operational detail for the people who must implement it.
Aivance engagements produce advice, architecture, and a prioritised roadmap. Implementation may require internal engineering work or third-party software, integration, testing, and operating costs. Those costs are scoped separately unless explicitly included in the proposal.
The governance gap most organisations face is not a documentation problem. It is the gap between what governance documents say will happen and what systems are technically capable of enforcing.
Find out whether your AI controls work in practice.
Start with the complimentary 30-minute Authority & Control Review. You receive a written scoping note within 48 hours, whether or not you work with us further.
Book an Authority & Control Review