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.

"This book is of the kind you always wanted but didn't think would or could ever exist: the universal field theory of problem solving." Tom Sommerlatte Typically today's tasks in management and consulting include project management, running workshops and strategic work - all complex activities, which require a multitude of skills and competencies. This standard work, which is also well accepted amongst consultants, gives you a reference or cookbook-style access to the most important tools, including a rating of each tool in terms of applicability, ease of use and effectiveness. In this considerably enlarged third edition, Nicolai Andler presents 152 of such tools, grouped into task-specific categories: Definition of a Situation/Problem - Information Gathering - Creativity - Information Consolidation - Goal Setting - Strategic, Technical and Organisational Analysis - Evaluation and Decision Making - Project Management. Checklists and Application Scenarios further enhance the use of this toolbox. Information provided by this book is: - comprehensive and sufficiently wide in scope, combined with a practical level of detail without being too academic - reliable and proven in numerous real implemented cases - easy to apply due to many different search options, checklists, application scenarios and guiding instructions. Written by a professional consultant, business analyst and business coach, this book is a unique reference work and guide for those wanting to learn about or who are active in the fields of consulting, project management and problem solving in general, both in business and engineering: business coaches and management trainers, workshop moderators, consultants and managers, project managers, lecturers and students.

The objective of this paper is to construct a model to assist contractors to select design consultants for design-build (DB) projects. A major survey of DB contractors was conducted to gauge the importance of the 40 attributes identified, through mailed standard questionnaire. The principal finding is that 34 of the 40 attributes identified are important for consultant selection and these were used to construct the Consultant Selection Model. The model was tested by six experts, and found to be robust. The conclusion of this study is that consultants who are selected to undertake DB projects need to excel in task perf o rmance and contextual performance. Their fees must be competitive and they must have good relationships with the contractor.