what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Friday, March 11, 2011

A champion at last


Things are looking up. I’m glad to report on a good-looking Association for independent consultants which is in the process of forming – TA-Consultants United. The list of problematic practices it identifies in the awarding and management of tenders surpasses even mine. It talks strongly about the cowboy companies and has a powerful critique of the drawing up of project specifications -
ToRs are often lacking quality in terms of:
• Prerequisite investments and/or structural changes in organizational development and capacity building are ignored, making it impossible for the project to succeed,
• The relation between tasks to be performed and required competencies of experts
• Expert profiles in ToRs tend to be rigid, standardized and quantitatively focused, rather than actual competence-based
• The selection procedure does not allow for the selection and deployment of the best team
• The current processes block contractors from becoming competitive on the basis of their actual skills and experience
• Bid-evaluators lack technical competence for assessing key methodological issues
• Bid evaluation is not related to modern management insights, for instance in selecting teams rather than individuals

The current CV system/assessment of experts is inappropriate for assessing the quality of an expert:
• Acquired competencies are not identified
• Quantities (years of “experience”) are more important than the quality of experience
• There are apparently no systems to assess and value comparable experience
• There is currently no acceptable system of performance evaluation
• Referees collection and proof of employment are arbitrary and bureaucratic rather than functional
It needs 300 paid-up members to get off the ground. Very well worth support - for less than 200 euros a year!
The graphic is one by the great Boris Angelushev I discovered earlier this year in Sofia. He was trained in Berlin in the early 1920s at the same time as Kathe Kollwitz

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