Management Consultancy - Multi-£Bn Change Programme

Background

Our customer was already using some of the traditional large consultancies combined with contingent recruitment labour, however had lost visibility of many of the programmes, and was struggling to manage key deliverables due to the complexity of outsourcing various parts of the programme to multiple consultancies.

Approach

1st Executive has contractual responsibility for this contract, which we are delivering via a team of senior Consultants, with a programme lead, each heading up a major workstream. Whilst the Consultants work autonomously under 1st Executive’s managed service, key to success is visibility of output to our customer, and very clear reporting of deliverables. We are on site at least one day per week, ensuring clear communication between our Consultants and the customer, with regular meetings and feedback to ensure that minor issues are dealt with immediately and deliverables managed effectively.

Our service is delivered on a time and materials basis against a statement of works, similar to a traditional consulting model, where our Consultants are charged out on a day rate. All Consultants are interviewed and approved by our customer prior to engagement, and our model gives our customer the flexibility to swap out resource as needed to flex with the needs of the programme.

Because this model places 1st Executive as the hiring entity (delivering a service to our customer), IR35 determination sits with us, thereby relieving our customer of liability. This was a key factor in our customer not wanting to go down the traditional recruitment route. We have strenuously tested the above model with both APSCO and a leading IR35 Consultancy lawyer, to ensure that this is HMRC compliant.

Additional resource when required can also be fed into the same consultancy model, as long as it sits under the umbrella of our managed service. This may be more senior level resource, autonomously leading additional programmes of work (outside of IR35) or more junior resource, sitting under the direction of one of our Consultants.

Outcome

1st Executive won a multi £m tender and were commissioned to provide and oversee a commercial leadership team, focusing on capital investments in a heavily regulated MOD environment.

We were significantly less expensive than using one of the large consulting groups delivering a cost saving in the region of 43%

We were able to choose from a much wider pool of available Procurement and Commercial talent in the market than a traditional consulting group, who would typically embed their own staff on standard consultancy day rates regardless of level of seniority and scope of remit.

Our client now has a drive to diversify their supplier base and increase the level of challenger / SME consultancy partners as opposed to Big 4