What eurozone crisis? – EuropeAid consulting trends and pay rates

How will ongoing monetary problems in the eurozone affect technical assistance – and, in particular, EuropeAid’s need for international development consultants? This question was front-and-center at our one-hour webinar “Successful Consulting With EuropeAid,” which featured three seasoned consultants and leaders with Technical Assistance Consultants United, a membership organization representing the interests of individual aid experts. Following the event, TACU’s experts addressed several more questions from the webinar audience on EuropeAid consulting trends. Here are some of the responses by Henry Leerentveld and Stephen Dewar, the group’s cofounders, as well as Michael Gericke, an advisory board member: What, if any, impact will the current monetary issues in the EU have on the EuropeAid program? It is impossible to predict what will happen if the euro and/or the eurozone collapse — chaos for a while, no doubt! However, assuming that the current system survives, there should not be any serious short-term effects arising from the general budgetary and financial problems within the EU. Development cooperation is a high priority for the EU and its member states, so we do not expect to see major cuts in the financial allocations for this activity. In fact the current planned budget for development cooperation shows an increase up to 2015. Framework contracts were designed initially as a swift way to mobilize experts quickly, but in fact consortia are very large and the system has become very heavy to manage. Has the EU indicated that it will simplify this process – and if so, how? What does TACU suggest on how to simplify the process? We have two proposals here. The first is to introduce a system for penalizing contracting authorities (mostly EU delegations) who exceed the 14-day limit for evaluating tenders. (The average decision time for framework contracts now is closer to 26 days.) This would not simplify procedures but it would speed them up, which would be of help to experts. Second, we would like to see the European Commission returning to the practice it used to follow, which is to recruit experts directly rather than going through competing consortia. This would certainly simplify matters. The commission has said it wants to speed up evaluation procedures and has told us it will reconsider direct contracting of experts on “one-person FWCs.” However, so far it has rejected our proposal to penalize late evaluations, relying instead on “encouraging” contracting authorities to do better. For more than a year, EuropeAid has made no progress on direct contracting; we — TACU — remind them constantly about their promises and one day we’ll get lucky! READ:‘What’s my place in global development?’ What are current trends in consultancy rates on short-term framework contracts? Specifically, what are the ranges of rates that are paid? I am aware that this varies by field, years of experience etc., but I would still appreciate a range (minimum and maximum) and/or some examples. We have the impression that the general trends in technical assistance consultancy rates over the last ten years are negative: Rates don’t seem to keep up with inflation. The same applies to framework contracts. As rightly indicated in the question, fee rates in FWCs further vary depending on field, level of expertise, region and duration. TACU is planning to do more extended research on fee rates and their development; this is planned for this year. It is, however, not easy to “dig up” fee rates, as many experts seem to think withholding information about their fees is in their interest. But it is only in the interest of contractors! At this stage we can only give you a rough ballpark figure: Daily fee rates for internationals in FWC vary between €400 and €750 (excluding per diems and other provisions). What are the rates that the EU pays directly contracted consultants? As EuropeAid no longer directly contracts technical assistance experts, this question has no answer.