| 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 | |
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| | operate in and to
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 | |
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| | we are focused on the
practical 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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