7th September 2005, 06:19 PM
Eggbasket's comments make a lot of sense to me and reflect my experience.
In addition, while consultancy companies may operate over the whole country, their individual staff members (in my experience) tend to stick to smaller areas. They may operate in more than one region, but overally they tend to cover about the same size of catchment as, say, one of the larger field units, and they have every opportunity to develop local knowledge.
True, we do tend to do some work outside the core regions - but then so do the field units, so what's the difference?
Troll - you make a lot of assumptions, and then treat them as evidence, but as far as I can see most of them are plain wrong.
The only pressure I, or any of the team I lead, have ever put a unit under is to do one of the following:
- fulfil the spec that they signed up to, which was agreed with the curator
- report according to the spec
- charge according to the prices and rates in their tender.
As for dodgy dealings between consultants and developers, the only major omissions from the specified scope that have occurred on any of my projects have been when the unit and the developer have done a deal behind my back. I am still trying to extract two large reports from units under these circumstances. A third one has just come in this week, after 3 years of pressure from me and the curator in partnership against an unwilling unit.
1man1desk
In addition, while consultancy companies may operate over the whole country, their individual staff members (in my experience) tend to stick to smaller areas. They may operate in more than one region, but overally they tend to cover about the same size of catchment as, say, one of the larger field units, and they have every opportunity to develop local knowledge.
True, we do tend to do some work outside the core regions - but then so do the field units, so what's the difference?
Troll - you make a lot of assumptions, and then treat them as evidence, but as far as I can see most of them are plain wrong.
The only pressure I, or any of the team I lead, have ever put a unit under is to do one of the following:
- fulfil the spec that they signed up to, which was agreed with the curator
- report according to the spec
- charge according to the prices and rates in their tender.
As for dodgy dealings between consultants and developers, the only major omissions from the specified scope that have occurred on any of my projects have been when the unit and the developer have done a deal behind my back. I am still trying to extract two large reports from units under these circumstances. A third one has just come in this week, after 3 years of pressure from me and the curator in partnership against an unwilling unit.
1man1desk