Engineering Professional Programs

Course Faculty: H. Wynnlee Crisp and Geoff Baillie

Get the right consultant

Communicate project expectations and standards

Develop the project work scope and get a fair price

Develop the agency-consultant partnership

Get a quality product and service

Get on-time and on-budget delivery

This two-day training is comprised of one day of web-based training (six hours prior to and two hours after the in-class meeting) and one day of in-class training.

In-class learning is enhanced by the use of short lectures, exercises, and discussion to explore practical methods used by successful owners to indirectly manage work performed by their planning and design consultants. Web-based learning utilizes interactive web tools with exercises submitted to the instructional team. This course covers each stage of project development, from consultant selection through project closeout, to examine owner actions that motivate consultants to deliver higher quality products and services, as well as common actions that hamper the outcome.

Owners and developers of public and private projects are an important influence on their consultants and can improve the results of their consultants’ work. Using effective management and direction techniques, the owner can lower costs, improve quality, and be more satisfied with the finished project. Similarly, consultants can increase their clients’ satisfaction by better understanding how owners conduct their businesses and integrating their expectations. Management of the owner-consultant interrelationship greatly influences the schedule, cost, and quality of the end product.

The course addresses the owner-consultant interaction from both the owner’s and the consultant’s perspectives. The course is taught by experienced project management professionals who have provided and used consultant services throughout their careers. They examine frequent owner complaints about consultants and describe alternative methods for avoiding or quickly rectifying unsatisfactory results. The key methods for enhancing owner-consultant success are embodied in the course topics, below.

Course Topics

Differentiating among consultants during a selection process and getting the right consultant for the job

Developing the owner-consultant partnership for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness

Establishing and managing expectations for the process, product and service

Getting a fair price and understanding the effects of risk

Monitoring consultant progress

Assuring on-time project delivery

Assuring on-budget performance

Assuring conformance with the scope of work and avoiding disappointment

Ethical considerations in the Owner-Consultant relationship

Integration of the lessons learned into daily practice

Who Should Attend

The course will benefit public and private sector professionals who engage engineering, architecture, and other consultants in planning, designing, and/or implementing capital projects of all types. Project Managers, general managers, directors, oversight boards, accountants, and others that may become involved in contracting and/or directing consultants will take away practical lessons from this training.

Continuing Education Units and Professional Development Hours

Course participants will earn 1.4 CEUs/14 PDHs upon successful completion of this course. The CEU is a nationally recognized measure of participation in a noncredit continuing education program that meets established criteria for increasing knowledge and competency.