Consultants need to explain in simple terms what they do to avoid being blamed for job losses and cut downs

As everybody knows, public sector new-build is on the wane. 鈥淢ore for less鈥� is the mantra now, and many of the consultants I speak to spy an opportunity: 鈥渁sset management鈥�, in other words advising how to squeeze more productivity out of existing buildings.

RLF boss Steven Barker claims that universities use just 20% of their estate capacity. After all, what are we doing with those silent lecture halls when students go home for their generous holidays?

But there is a stumbling block to this growing stream of business. 鈥淓xternal consultants鈥� are dirty words in newspapers and distrusted by the public. For the right they waste taxpayers鈥� money; for the left they are part of the privatisation of public services. And the Tories seem much less favourable to consultants than Labour were.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley said he was 鈥� by reports that the NHS spent more than 拢300m on consultants last year. Underlying it all, I think, is that few outside the industry really have any grasp of what consultants actually do.

The first step for consultants, if they are to achieve a public rehabilitation, is to cut the BS

Alan Leaman, chief executive of the Management Consultancies Association, mounted a passable of the profession in the Guardian, but it was still too full of jargon 鈥� my favourite was 鈥渁n invaluable external perspective鈥� 鈥� and will have left anyone reading it still scratching their heads over what it is consultants actually change about an organisation.

Do they just fire half the staff and change the logo? Because that is what most people, or at least anyone familiar with the character Johnson from Peep Show, think.

The first step for consultants, if they are to achieve a public rehabilitation, is to cut the BS. So out with phrases like 鈥渄elivering client value鈥� and in with concrete explanations like 鈥渨e helped a hospital to cut its energy bills by installing low-energy lighting鈥�.

Nobody questions the wisdom of the public sector employing outside architects, because everybody knows what they do, and realises that no one else could do it.

If consultants want to be on board for the mother of all efficiency drives and prevent a political backlash, they have to explain why they are equally invaluable.

Topics