Role and Selection of Consultants

The light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs. 

After defining consultant from an organizational and individual perspective and exploring reasons why consultants are retained, this chapter discusses the characteristics of successful consultants. The consultant selection process, which varies in complexity from extremely elaborate and costly to simple sole source selection, is described. It includes discussion of price-based selection (PBS) versus qualifications-based selection (QBS) of professional service firms and their impacts on clients, owners, customers, and stakeholders. A discussion of the negative impacts of PBS selection on consulting firms concludes the chapter. 

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Design, or more specifically, the engineers and other technical professionals who do it, are the principal determinants of cost and quality. The importance of selecting those who will do a design, because of their impact on total costs, is addressed further in Chapter 13, Role and Selection of Consultants. ... 

Depending on your particular set of questions at that future time, you may decide that now is the time to fly solo, to go out on your own, to start your own business. With that possibility in mind, you should be even more mindful the role and selection of consultants as described in this chapter. 

Role and Selection of Consultants Price-Based Selection... 

Instruct students in business fundamentals. Examples include finance, decision economics, human resources, law, ethics, the role and selection of consultants, and marketing. 

A requisite for the selection process is having sufficient staff with the appropriate technical skills to select the appropriate drugs (Cohen 2003). Ideally, skills should encompass usage of evidence-based resources, critical evaluation of evidence, and knowledge of adverse drug reactions, "morbidity profile shifts", and pharmacoeconomic evaluations. Usually, physicians and pharmacists fill this role, along with other relevant local consultants (Cohen 2003). 

Other participants can be involved in a full time or in a limited consulting role depending on the nature of the incident, ft is important to include people who know what actually happens in the field—not just what is supposed to happen. The team selection should be able to withstand third party scrutiny such as that of employees, departments, union representatives, community groups, and legal. Some companies include trade union safety representatives in the incident investigation. Positions to consider include ... 

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