Consultancy service: Project briefing guide

We are delighted that you are considering using the Homeless Link Consultancy service to provide support to your organisation. As part of your decision making process, you might want to think about writing a briefing document to help us tailor our service to meet your needs. It also helps us to ensure that the proposal that we put together for you has all the information you need to make a decision about whether we are the right consultants for your project.

Key Questions

The briefing document only needs to be short – at most 2 sides of A4. Before you put the brief together it helps to ask yourself a number of key questions. You might also want to talk these through with your colleagues, your team and / or your board.

• Who will liaise with the consultant? It is really helpful to have one named person within your organisation who is responsible for the project and will be the main contact point for our consultant.
• How big is the project? Does it require a steering group or advisory group? This can be helpful for larger projects.
• How regular do you want the meetings between the consultant and the named contact in your organisation to be? Do they all need to be face to face or can some be by phone or e-mail?
• Who will complete all the work within the project plan once it is agreed? Do you want all the work done externally or would you prefer some / most to be facilitated by the consultant and completed internally? If there will be administrative tasks, can you save money by doing some of this internally? (e.g. typing up minutes from meetings).

Dependant on the project you are commissioning, information you might want to include within your brief could be:

• Who you are - Provide an overview of your organisation (purpose, vision, values, aims, client base, geographical scope etc).
• The scope of the project - What is the focus of the project? Is it about the whole organisation or just one part of the service?
• The purpose of the project - Research? To enable strategic planning? To obtain funding? To improve outcomes?
• What you want to find out through the project - Service user needs? The underlying causes of a current issue or challenge? Ideas for change?
• How the information from the project will be used - Do you want an end report? In what format? Who is the audience for this?
• Think about information - What monitoring data do you have? How is this stored? Are there previous reports that can be used? What data do you expect to be collected by the consultant? What are the data protection and confidentiality issues that the consultant needs to be aware of?
• Who should be part of the project - Are there key stakeholders that you want to consult with or have involved in the project
• Project Management - How will you liaise with the consultant and who will oversee the project?
• Timescales - When do you want the work to be carried out? Are there deadlines? Is there any flexibility in the timings?
• Budget - Do you have funding to complete the project? What is your budget? Does this include VAT?
• Next steps - When do you need to receive the proposal by? When will you decide whether to go ahead with the project and / or use our services? When do you want the work to start?
• Other issues - Is there anything else that we need to be aware of? Do you have any concerns? Are there any IT compatibility issues? Is there anything else that may effect how the work is carried out?

We hope you have found this guidance useful.

Further Information

If you would like to talk anything through or would like any further information or guidance related to the Homeless Link Consultancy Service, please contact  Claire Beckett, Consultancy and Training Manager on 020 7840 4453 or by email.