About Us

How We Operate

Most projects undertaken by Timestar are on a fixed price basis, but in cases where this is impractical because of the open-endedness of the requirements, or is simply not the client’s preferred method of working, any or all of of Timestar’s services can be provided on a per-day or per-hour basis. This includes the provision of engineering staff to work entirely on client’s premises, even where this is for extended periods.

When preparing a fixed price quotation, we will work from the client’s statement of requirements in whatever form it exists, even if purely verbal.

We will often provide a considerable input, in terms of time and cost, to help define and clarify the requirements of a project, before any commercial relationship is entered into.

How and where we work

How and where we carry out the work depends on the nature of the project, taking into account such factors as the degree of liaison which is necessary with the client’s staff, and whether or not access to on-site hardware and facilities is essential.  Most projects however involve some element of time spent on the client’s premises, at least for the commissioning and acceptance testing stages.

Intellectual Property and design ownership

Timestar’s commitment is, in general, to deliver a proven design solution (whether in terms of software, hardware or both) and therefore the intellectual property specifically generated in the course of the project belongs to the client.

The documents which incorporate that intellectual property (such as design schematics, PCB Gerber files and software source code) are therefore made freely available to the client, although not all clients make use of this facility, preferring to come back to Timestar for the supply of further quantities of designed hardware products and/or enhancements of and modifications to software.

The one exception to the above is in respect of software copyright. Since parts of a bespoke software package required by one client may often be most economically delivered by modifying bespoke software previously created for another, we will usually negotiate a software development contract such that the copyright to the developed software is retained by Timestar, with the client being granted an unrestricted and irrevocable licence to copy, modify and distribute it, provided that Timestar’s copyright to the original delivered source is acknowledged.