Kiah Consulting

Talking about building strategic partnering relationships is the flavour of the month, especially in Defence where there always seems to be a search for a model that works better than what is happening now. I don’t think that is a bad goal, by the way, but we don’t seem to have come very far. Achieving […]

There is an often-unspoken contributor to blowouts in government projects, costs and timelines (which often leads to further time and costs in disputes) and that is the public and private sectors general misunderstanding of each other’s view. The actual monetary impact of this struggle is unknown, but there is significant value lost because of it. […]

If we saved just 1% on procurement, what could we do? In 2017, the federal government executed $47bn of new contracts.1  Negotiating a 1% reduction would have saved $470m, almost half a billion dollars. One per cent.  Looked at another way, that 1% could be ten new specialist cancer units in regional Australia, or fifty […]

A recent article suggested replacing consultants with a “public sector reserve”. I thought it was a nonsense, addressing a ‘symptom’ rather than the root cause. The underlying problem seems clear – the public service doesn’t get sufficient value for money from the consultants it hires. Consultants are here to stay, so let’s address the real […]

Integrate your life, don’t balance between work and life. While the world might seem to be in turmoil, we have always been constantly transitioning. You may be transitioning to a new job, from the public sector, between industries, to consulting, from the military. The smoother the transition, the better will be the result. This is […]

The public sector is often exhorted to be more commercial in its behaviours. “In some ways it’s a bit of a nonsense”, says MD of Kiah Consulting, John Glenn. “Dogma, like any other dogma, doesn’t make sense. The public sector is about spending money to deliver a social good. There is nothing commercial in that, […]