Fulfilment, excitement and getting closer to the project - just a few reasons why some decide to quit the big players for smaller firms

Having made it to associate at Davis Langdon, Arthur Adair was well on his way. He'd carved out a niche for himself as an expert in the education sector and had a few high profile projects under his belt. It's a fair bet that if he kept his head down and carried on pulling off projects like Birmingham's £23m Matthew Boulton College scheme he'd have been joining the ranks of the partners at the giant firm. But he gave it all up earlier this year to join Concept, a Midlands outfit of about 20 staff.

Adair is one of a string of consultants who have left the security of large companies to pursue relatively precarious careers at much smaller firms. They say that the chance to innovate and get closer to clients outweighs having the advantage of a big name backing you up.

Adair joined Davis Langdon in Birmingham two and a half years ago after leaving medium-sized company Francis Graves. He says: "Davis Langdon is a huge and very powerful firm with blue-chip clients and high profile projects, but (working for them) leads inevitably into being channelled into a specialism. I wasn't used to this. I had always worked on a variety of projects, from conception to completion."

There are no entrepreneurs anymore in the industry

Joe Giordano, director, Devsol

It left him feeling frustrated. "I was not able to make as full a contribution to Davis Langdon as I wanted. I wasn't getting fulfilled and I couldn't see my way out of that in the medium term."

In Concept's eight-strong Birmingham office, Adair already feels he is involved in projects "more fully". "Today I'm meeting Simon Gardiner (Concept's director of business development) to discuss how we can harness our skills to win work. So I'm getting involved on the front end. I'll be going to see potential clients and explaining what we do."

I wasn’t getting fulfilled and I couldn’t see my way out in the medium term

Arthur Adair, senior PM, Concept

This contrasts strikingly with his experience at Davis Langdon, where "the work just gets passed down to you so you don't get the excitement of winning the job or the sense of ownership of the job".

Stan Inskip is associate and head of Liverpool for another smaller operation - CM Parker Browne. He joined over a year ago from contracting giant Kajima. "It was a culture shock. At Kajima there would be people who would do lots of different tasks for you. At CMPB suddenly I had to get all my tools out the box." This meant writing reports, attending meetings and even taking minutes, which he said would have been handled by a junior project manager at Kajima.

Yet he finds his new role more rewarding. "I don't miss anything from Kajima. Now I can get involved in a project again. You get more enjoyment from being closer to the work."

Joe Giordano

Joe Giordano has worked for Davis Langdon and Gardiner & Theobald but is now a director at small development consultancy Devsol. He argues that there is more space for original thinking in small companies. “At big firms you get 50 graduates on a training programme and they all get indoctrinated in the same way. As a result, there are no entrepreneurs anymore in the industry. We need people to break away and drag the industry into the 21st century.”

But he concedes it’s a riskier existence. At director level, “you won't necessarily have the comfort of a regular salary because getting paid is dependent on client fees.

You have to make sure the office rent is paid first.”

The absence of a big firm-type infrastructure can also grate, admits Giordano. “You don’t have the benefits of BUPA. You haven’t got the same kind of IT support. And it’s hard at first when you want to post a letter and have to go down to the post office to buy stamps rather than simply leaving it in the post tray.”

Yet Giordano is confident he has made the right move. “People who work for big companies tend to hide their personalities, but to be creative you need to be yourself.

People tell me I should have made this move years ago.”

Source

QS News