| Mick James talks to Stephen Vinall, head of government & public sector at PIPC, about not only surviving a recession but growing during it. |
| PIPC wants more than just to survive in a recession |
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| | By Mick James
A pressing concern
for many consultancies
in the current climate
is not merely survival
but their ability to
grow. For a consultancy,
growth is not merely a
route to more money but
an integral part of what
keeps the organism
alive. So when I spoke
to Stephen Vinall, head
of government & public
sector at PIPC, our main
discussion was about how
that organisation is
planning to stick to its
ambitious growth
targets.
Vinall, who joined
PIPC two years ago from
PricewaterhouseCoopers,
says that one of the
things that attracted
him to the firm was the
strong platform and
reputation it had built
in project and programme
management.
“The firm had gone
from £15m to £30m, so
the question was, what’s
next, how do we get to
be a £100m business,” he
says. “In the UK we
realised we had to be
very clear about the
markets we wanted to
operate in and to | |
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| | reinforce our success,
and not take a
scattergun approach.”
In the public sector
PIPC’s strategy has been
to focus on three
sectors: children and
families, local
government frontline
services such as social
care, and health. Areas
where there are clear
agendas to work with,
such as the
post-Victoria Climbie
work at the departmental
level between the
Department of Health and
the Department for
Children, Schools and
Families (DCSF), or
local authorities
working to join up
education and children’s
social services at the
front line.
“My team combines
ex-Big Four consultants
with qualified social
workers, plus a strong
associate base,” says
Vinall. “We want to
bring the disciplines of
structured programme
management to the care
sector – a lot of people
say they do project and
programme management,
but we are focused on
the practical | |
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| | application of that.”
This means that PIPC
is operating in a world
where there are only a
small group of people
who have enough project
and programme management
expertise and enough
technical credibility.
“There’s only a small
number of people with
that strong sector and
consultancy background,
and we are
cherry-picking them,”
says Vinall. “The
criteria are very
exhaustive – there are
perhaps 10 or 15 of
these people in the
country and we know who
they are.”
This scarcity of
skill makes it hard for
the bigger players to
compete, says Vinall:
“Their constant
development path makes
it very hard to retain
the expertise – as
people move up the food
chain they become too
expensive.”
Continued on page 15
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