The original note, as written at the time
Don’t pay your Consultants any more. Instead increase their power and liability in determining the outcome, and reduce their pay by a quarter the current rate.
Ongoing development
Don’t pay your consultants any more. Instead increase their power and liability in determining the outcome, and reduce their pay by a quarter of the current rate.
The reasoning behind it is that the fee and the responsibility are pulling in opposite directions. We pay consultants well enough to be comfortable and then strip their authority clause by clause, so the person with the least power carries the reputation and the person with the most power carries the invoice. That arrangement does not produce good buildings. It produces buildings that are safe, and safe in this context means nothing was decided.
If you want a consultant to be accountable, give them the decision and let them carry it. Reduce the fee by a quarter, which is a real saving and also an honest statement that you are buying judgement rather than hours. In return, when they say no to something, no is what happens.
The filter this creates is the point. A practice that will accept a quarter less money for a great deal more authority is a practice that wants to build something. A practice that refuses is telling you it was selling time.
It is a harder conversation than the one we normally have about fees, and it produces better buildings, which is the only thing the fee was ever for.