Cutting Consultants
Just days after a consultant report on Wellington City Council announced that the Council could complete its work with hundreds less staff and save much cost, a leaked report on the same consultancy shows that similar or higher cost and therefore lower fees apply to the consultancy itself.
I am not able to identify the source but consider it very credible.
The consultancy is described as “operating off a totally unjustifiable cost base” and “capable of lowering feeds by at least 25%” if it followed the straightforward recommendations.
The cost reduction opportunities include:
sending one consultant to meetings instead of the average of three
Recording meetings by AI
Shifting from top end office accomodation to smaller premises equivalent to a public body office in class and reflecting actual space needs under the new model
Eliminating partner catering and entertainment costs
Reducing margins on fees especially charge out rates which are at a high level compared to staff remuneration is also proposed, with fully transparent costing to clients.
In a summary the consultant report on the consultants identified how closely its proposals fitted with the elimination of waste and cost and barriers to economic growth being advocated by the Coalition.
“We expect that pressure will come from both Government and private clients to see these changes implemented alongside supermarket, bank and energy companies charges”.
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Cutting consultants is different to cutting consultants’ charge out costs. The government has not said anything about cutting charge out costs. (As for WCC…) Hopefully once the issue is raised it will be unavoidable. Consultants are a huge rip-off for all the reasons given and one other important issue.
Since the very first time I encountered a consultant in the UK in 1990, it has been obvious that their staff are often poorly trained graduates and have no substantial skills relevant to the analysis they are being expected to carry out (they read prior reports and a few academic articles). They barely make sense according to the frequently discredited Business Management model which claims that management is a separate skill and knowledge of the actual business is not necessary for effective management.
Government should be assessing consultant personnel on the same basis to that which they assess permanent hires. In fact consultant skills and experience should be greater because they know so little about the organisation/industry they are being asked to report on. The actual staff doing the job should be assessed as well as the more senior staff who front getting contracts.
I heard a very similar story from a trusted source yesterday about specific consultants at Defence. So the cutting of consultants and contractors by the government certainly hasn’t worked. Still the same issues (wasted money).