A couple of years ago, a suburban Chicago municipality we'll call Wilkinsville contacted our firm for a very unusual assignment.

They wanted their entire zoning ordinance rewritten. What made the assignment extraordinary was that their ordinance was practically brand new. It had been totally reworked by the staff of a regional planning commission just three years before.

Now, zoning regulations normally have a life expectancy of more than three years. But the mayor of Wilkinsville explained that after working with the regulations for three years, they had found them too complex, contradictory, and confusing to tolerate any longer.

Wilkinsville had hired the regional planners rather than a private firm thinking they would save money. but instead of saving money, they found they had to pay a second time just three years later for the same work.

This anecdote highlights the importance of selecting the right professional consultant. Like Wilkinsville, many municipalities base this decision solely on price — the "low bidder" approach. But sometimes the consultant that initially appears the cheapest can wind up the most costly.

Use of consultants is necessary in virtually every community. Staffs are never big enough to handle everything municipalities need to do. And adding experienced professionals to the permanent payroll can be burdensome financially for years to come.

But selecting a professional services provider like an engineer, city planner, law firm, landscape architect, accountant, or economic development specialist is not easy. This is because professional services are not standardized commodities.

A product or service that can be defined by a list of specs, like a construction job, can lend itself to shopping by price. But most professional assignments can be done in any one of a number of ways at varying costs and levels of effectiveness.

The author's experience both as consultant and as municipal department head, suggests steps that can be helpful in selecting the right firm.

1. Decide What You Want to Do
Failure to do this at the outset is one of the biggest mistakes clients make. Only you can decide the job to be done. And it is only when you know what you need to do that you can decide which consultant you need.

Avoid asking prospective consultants what to do. Many will define your problem in terms of the services they want to sell. To a consultant with a hammer, your problem is always a nail.

Decide yourself whether your problem is a nail. If it isn't, don't seek out consultants with hammers.

2. Determine What Kind of Consultant You Need
If you have first determined what it is you need to do, this step will be easier. You will know whether you need a consultant with a ball peen hammer or one with a Phillips screwdriver.

JOHN L, GANN, JR. is President of Gann Associates, a Glen Ellyn development consulting firm. The firm's recent Illinois work includes assignments in Bensenville, McHenry, and Warrenville.

February 1991 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 9

But what about the grey areas? The roles that do not clearly fall within the traditional areas of professional activity are harder to cast. In the newer specialties like community planning, zoning, environmental management, strategic planning, and economic development, firms with different professional backgrounds claim expertise.

The key here is to determine precisely the skills that will be most important. In a downtown revitalization assignment, for example, design skills, economic analysis skills, or marketing skills may be paramount, depending on what kinds of results you want. Remember that it is unusual to find a full complement of top people with very different skills in a single firm. All firms, small and large, are strong in certain areas, weak in others.

3. Get Names of Consultants
Next, get names of a number of consultants in the right field.

Some municipal officials simply contact the next town down the road and ask who they've used. However, the best consultant for a nearby town may not be the best consultant for you.

There are several sources for such names. Ads in Illinois Municipal Review are a good place to start. Ads in other publications and directories and asking around can add more names to your list.

4. Prepare and Send an RFQ
Next, prepare a written statement of what you want the consultant to do. Put this in a Request for Qualifications and mail it to the firms you identified.

Include as much detail as possible about what you want from the firm you hire. However, don't be specific on points that don't matter much to you, since you may discourage some qualified firms from responding.

Ask in your mailing that firms interested in the job file a Statement of Qualifications. An SOQ documents a firm's capabilities in its field. It does not propose a work program or fee.

While some municipalities initially issue a Request for Proposals rather than a Request for Qualifications, sending the RFQ first has advantages. Preparing a good proposal is time-consuming work for which the consultant is not paid. Once a firm has been chosen as a finalist, this cost can be justified. But at an earlier stage, when the consultant has no feel for the chances of landing the job, spending time on a proposal is a risk very qualified firms sometimes will not take.

For the municipality, reviewing SOQ's before requesting proposals can assure that a consultant will not be chosen on the sole basis of a low price. This does not mean that budget limitations cannot influence the final outcome. It only means that finalists will be chosen

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because they are good and not because they are cheap.

One factor in evaluating proposals can be the amount of the fee. Or if a single consultant is chosen on the basis of the RFQ, the fee can be negotiated. If negotiations are unsuccessful, the second-place finisher can be chosen.

5. Tailor Selection Process to Job Size
A lengthy and involved multi-stage process can be appropriate to select a consultant for a $100, 000 job, since the city will be making a considerable investment in the work.

The procedure for selecting a firm for a $5, 000 job should, however, be very simple. It can cost a consultant that much or more just to prepare a proposal. And the city could spend that amount just on staff time if the selection process is too elaborate.

6. Review Credentials
In appraising consultants' credentials, look for education in the particular field as well as accreditation by professional societies in that field. Experience in the type of work you need done or closely related work and publication related to that type of work are other indicators. Note honors or awards, but only those that reflect professional accomplishment. Election as an officer in a professional society, for example, may simply mean that an individual is a good politician.

And you must evaluate the credentials of the right people. Only the people who will work on your project count. Everyone else is irrelevant. Some brochures and SOQ's cite work accomplished by people who are no longer with the firm. Or they note credentials of current employees who will not be available for your job. Such information should not sway your decision.

Some firms send a principal out to meet prospects then turn the work over to a junior staffer. The person who so impressed you in the interview may spend little or no time on your job. When you interview, insist on talking with the person who will be most deeply involved in your work.

Remember that whether you hire a one-person company or one of the largest consulting firms, ultimately you are really hiring an individual, or several individuals constituting your project team. Be satisfied that the capabilities of that individual offer the best assurance of a successful project.

7. Request Proposals
Choose from one to four finalists based on your evaluation of the SOQ's. Ask them to prepare proposals detailing what they will do, who in the firm will do it, how long it will take, and what it will cost.

In your request, indicate specifically the criteria by which you will judge the proposals. Besides being fair to the finalists, doing this will help you clarify your own

February 1991 / Illinois Municipal Review / Page 11

thinking and perhaps avoid later disagreements among members of the selection committee.

8. Evaluate Fees
Judge fees in terms of the quantity and quality of the work involved.

A demographic study for example, can be done for $5, 000 or $50, 000. The $5.000 study will not be as useful for many purposes as the $50, 000 study. Yet for some purposes, the $50, 000 study, though superior, will be unnecessary and wasteful and the $5, 000 study entirely satisfactory.

9. Be Aware of Consultant Biases
If your problem is not a nail, one kind of consultant to avoid is the consultant who only has a hammer. The other one to avoid is the consultant with a professional or ideological bias against using anything but a hammer.

If you want to generate growth in your town, you might not want to hire a consultant who is an extreme environmentalist. If you want to boost your downtown area economically, it might be unwise to hire a consultant concerned mainly with beautification or historic preservation.

An article in the paper last year told of a suburban city we'll call Sylvan Hills. It hired a county planning staff as a consultant to develop a land use plan. One of the land use issues in Sylvan Hills was a local effort to keep prime land for commercial tax base development. But this land was also sought by another county agency for acquisition for open space.

When the county planners' preliminary land use plan for Sylvan Hills showed all this land in open space use, the city felt betrayed and canceled its contract for the work. Asking staff from one level of government with its own political agenda to do unbiased work for another level of government is perhaps unduly trusting. But it is surprising how often it is done.

Economic interests can also bias a consultant's work. Some communities have hired architectural or engineering firms to do community plans.

These plans sometimes find a "need" for certain building or public works improvements of the kinds routinely designed by the firm doing the plan. It is, of course, possible that these improvements are in fact really needed. But the best way to ensure objective findings is to make sure your consultant will not stand to gain politically or financially from the results of the consulting assignment.

Summary
Like anything worthwhile, finding the right consultant takes a little work.

But the results of hiring the best consultant for the job can be worth it, as many towns that have tried new consultants have discovered. And as Wilkinsville, Sylvan Hills, and other communities have found, using the wrong consultant can sometimes put you back to square one a little poorer and a lot wiser. •

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