This report explains how to identify a list of prospective consultants, define the consultant's task, establish a budget, and prepare an RFP that best represents your agency and its project. It also tells how to prevent miscommunication, establish control over the project, and resolve disputes. A sample evaluation form will help you compare applicants. This must-read guide will help you and your consultant avoid common pitfalls and complete your project on time and to specifications.

A popular and practical guide on how to be an effective planning commissioner. Filled with checklists and outlines, it's both a good introduction and a handy reference. Includes a training checklist for new commissioners, criteria for keeping a master plan in working order, lists of tools to guide growth, advice on how to deal with professional staff, and dos and don'ts for conducting successful public meetings. This edition sharpens the focus on how commissioners and their staffs can operate under four core principles for planning commissioners: citizen involvement, smaller is better, living in a market-driven system, and orderly growth.

This book is perfect for anyone who needs to use contractors, consultants or other professional advisers, whatever their business. Acknowledged expert Harold Lewis uses his experience on both sides of the business relationship and explains the whole process. The first book to deal with this subject so comprehensively, Using and Choosing Consultants & Advisers gives best practice advice that can immediately be put into effect; doesn't take sides on client-consultancy issues but offers a balanced view; helps clients get into the mind of consultants, showing them how consultancy works from the inside; is addressed to businesses/non-commercial groups as well as individuals. The valuable advice it contains will be useful not just for new businesses, but also for established firms seeking to strengthen and extend their contracting skills. Written in a crisp, accessible and businesslike style, the book contains numerous examples and checklists as well as case studies of good and bad practice. This book will help you avoid mistakes and pitfalls, save time, money and effort, and make the process of working with consultants really worthwhile.