Working on interesting projects for a firm that wants to produce rigorous, independent, economic analysis.The good thingsA consultancy with highly intelligent and well-seasoned consultants. Recent management renewal has brought much-needed new ideas. Company covers a diverse range of sectors, about half of the work is related to energy but the firm is also strong in indigenous affairs, education, as well as more general public sector areas.
The challengesGovernment procurement is so cautious that they only hire 'the big four' for large or contentious projects, no matter how bad their output is. This is reducing the pool of jobs that boutique consultancies can compete for, and a lot of time (and money) is wasted making up the numbers for procurement governance processes.
Previous management was too cautious about hiring junior staff, so the firm was top-heavy. Great for juniors who work directly alongside subject matter experts, but puts a lot of pressure on senior staff when there's nobody available to help. Also, not adopting a traditional 'pyramid' model means that any individual principal will have less projects under his belt than the big 4 partners they are competing against.
Management was slow to hire and develop skills in areas such as GIS, programming, Big Data, Machine Learning, etc. Old dogs must learn new tricks.