AIDA Consulting · About us

About AIDA

AIDA stands for Artificial Intelligence Data Analysis. We use AI sparingly, and we build AI products that minimize and eliminate risk: low-cost tools that are quick to build because AI helps build them, each with strict guardrails, controls and processes designed to eliminate the risk of a rogue agent damaging or destroying production data or infrastructure.

What that means in practice

AI speeds up the building, and stays out of the dangerous placesAI helps design, write, test and document. It never gets unsupervised access to production data or infrastructure. Where a product runs AI at all, it runs inside limits a person set.
The controls are designed in, not bolted onEvery product is built so that a mistake, by a person or an agent, is stopped, contained or reversible.

Guardrails we already use

These run today in AIDA's own systems, and every one is a pattern we bring to client work.

1A person runs anything that touches productionAI writes the command; a person reads it and runs it. AI sessions never run database, container or scheduler commands themselves.
2Deleting is off by defaultAn AI session can't delete a file until a person approves it, folder by folder, for that session only.
3Read-only by designDashboards can only call a few read-only functions. Every read has a time limit, and the one write path is narrow, capped and rate-limited.
4Nothing exposedDatabases sit behind an outbound-only tunnel and a service-token gate. The token never reaches a browser.
5Separate everythingEach product and demo has its own database, passwords and network, so one mistake can't spread.
6Stop rather than guessLoaders refuse the wrong kind of file before writing anything. Builds stop if anything unexpected changed. Server settings are tested before they go live.
7A person reviews before a client sees itRanked results are reviewed by a person, and every KPI is certified by a named owner before it publishes.
8AI stays outside the customer-data boundaryAI helps build the tools. It works on code and aggregated numbers, not on customer records.
9Deterministic where it countsScores and KPIs come from plain, versioned SQL functions, not from a model's judgment at run time.
10Every change can be undoneFiles are backed up before an AI edit, old versions are kept for rollback, and decisions are logged, never rewritten.

Our products

Our founder

Mike MacLeod

Founder, AIDA Consulting

Mike has spent more than 15 years leading technology programs as a project manager, business analyst and solution architect, most of it inside banks and other regulated businesses. At Tier1 Financial Solutions (2018 to 2024) he delivered financial-services CRM programs and spent two years delivering Anti-Money Laundering software and analytics on the Alessa platform, running up to five compliance projects at once. Before that he was a solution architect at MASS Engines, and most recently he led delivery as a Senior Project Manager at HSS Business Solutions.

His work includes a $3.1 million, 18-month CRM rollout for Scotia Global Banking and Markets, and taking over Barclays' flagship engagement and moving it from red to green within weeks, with reporting and an issue-management system he built himself.

In 2026 he built AIDA on his own, from the ground up, using AI: a job-search and recruiting platform with its own database, scoring engine, workflow automation and secure client portal, running on free and open-source software for about $15 a month. He wrote the guardrails its AI works under, and they are the basis of how AIDA builds for clients.

Credentials

  • Project Management Professional (PMP), 2026
  • Salesforce Certified Administrator, 2012
  • Salesforce Certified Platform Developer I, 2012
  • B.Sc., Dalhousie University