By Rui DeCarvalho, R.J. Burnside
Those of us employed in consulting that recall the use of the slide ruler and have seen the transition to the age of social media cannot but reflect on the transformation that has also taken place in the consulting environment.
Over the years, the supply side of consulting services has been transformed dramatically. Those small single owner shops first evolved into mid-size employee owned firms and, more recently, into units of very large international, multi-discipline firms with thousands of employees worldwide.
This consolidation is driven by the need to directly access and control the essential technical resources needed to position, secure and successfully carry out larger and more complex projects in the competitive environment that comes with globalization.
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On the client side, especially in the public sector, the manner in which professional services are retained has changed. The long-standing “relationship and trust model” has now given way to formal arms-length procurement processes. Perhaps this is not a direct consequence and response to the new reality on the supply side, but it is, none the less, a much more compatible process with the more impersonal nature of consulting.
If we consider some of the prominent and negative goings-on that are reported to have occurred in some regions of the country, we may well conclude that these procurement processes are more than appropriate. In fact, they may need to become even more at arms-length. The contract language now becomes the default framework for the relationship and, should it deteriorate and become adversarial, dispute resolution mechanisms become the default.
Clearly, the pure and informal relationship model that appeared to work well in the past can now seem almost as appropriate as the slide ruler. The interests of stakeholders on the client side are, to a large extent, more vocal and appropriately founded on the premise of value for money, transparency and accountability. These interests dictate the trend to an ever-increasing purely transactional environment.
On the consultant side, stock market prices, trends and street values have now replaced the patience, flexibility and relationships that were the prerogative of the principal engineer and of the small group of partners. From the client’s perspective, political positions and commitments in diverse amalgamated jurisdictions dictate the agenda and objectives of the public works director and project managers.
These are now processed through the filters of procurement by-laws and legal-driven-mandates. It is unfortunate that the resulting overall environment now promotes divergent goals for the client and for the consultant.
Transparency, competition, cost-effectiveness, value for money, accountability are all very noble objectives. However, they come at the expense of the value derived from shared goals, collaborative problem solving, innovation, and long-term vision. This is in contrast to the quick and short term that is symptomatic of political immediacy.
The challenge is to adopt an improved mechanism that promotes the return to some of the elements of collaborative problem-solving between the consultant and the client, amidst the complexities of today’s business environment. The challenge is to establish a cooperative procurement process that will ensure transparency, accountability, integrity and the value objectives for all stakeholders.
Procurement of professional engineering services through an appropriately designed and executed quality based selection (QBS – Quality Based Consultant Selection Guide, Sep. 2011, FIDIC) process is internationally recognized as the basis for establishing the positive and synergetic relationship between the client and the consultant.
