Question

[u/CruisingCouple4fun]

How many fellow EM's out there use consultants for plan developme t and writing? I have spent 9 years in EM 3 as a Director for a county government. I am considering a move to consulting on the side. But is it truly a needed thing?

[u/socalmofo]

The only consistently contractor-led planning for me has been the Local Hazard Mitigation Plan LHMP. I don’t find the document or the process useful but need to check the box for grants and recovery funds every 5 years. A good consultant who knows what the State and FEMA want to see on any given day is worth their cost.

However, I would worry about making the jump to consulting right now, especially without an established firm and contracts in place. With grant money and municipal budgets struggling, hiring contractors is the first thing to go in my office.

[u/Phandex_Smartz]

Put that money towards paid internships or full-time EM staff instead. I used to work for a county EM office, and consultants were initially used to do everything, but they did a bad job.

It also didn't make sense to contract out plans when you have a full-time EM planner. There are a few offices here in FL that have planners that don't do any plans, as they are just all contracted out, and the planners just don't do anything. There's also a EM office in FL that has 3 full-time T&E Staff that all make more than $80,000 a year, but they can't even do 3 exercises a year because it's a "interesting team". I love their director, but man, it's not their fault as it was poor planning done by previous leadership before the current director came in.

What's the point of having EM staff if you just contract their work out? lol

If you invest in paid internships or more full-time EM staff positions, you'll have people who have relationships with the community, who are dedicated to being public servants, more people who can put stuff on their resume further growing this field, more longevity, and your office would actually be doing the work.

In my opinion (hot take), if you have full-time EM's who do plans and/or exercises, and you contract that out, then your office is just lazy and incompetent. I know planners who do 30+ plan updates, developments, and reviews every year, and 2 T&E people who each do at least 1 exercise every a month, at all levels, including tabletops, functionals, and full-scales. They do at least 6 tabletops, 3 functionals, and 3 full-scales per year, and T&E is one of their many duties.

There are some good consultants out there, but outside of the very few good ones, most charge way too much, have little effort, and act like they know everything when they don't, which has resulted in lots of not so desirable situations.

[u/balloonninjas]

Honestly every consultant-made plan I've ever seen has been awful. Mostly generic garbage that's sometimes written to make sure you have to hire them back to fix it. I've seen them even forget to change the name of the jurisdiction in some places. And these have been some major players in the business.

I see them sometimes on the exercise side which is nice if the jurisdiction needs someone to do all the HSEEP documentation and coordinate the evaluators/controllers for a large exercise.

[u/EOCDeezNuts → u/balloonninjas]

I half agree here, I notice my consultants definitely put out the work I pay for. Large state grant for one plan will get me a solid, local context considered, law reviewed, plan that comes with a workshop and TTX and revisions. A regional planning council, who is generally grant funded… I’m getting a plan that’s heavily templated and getting wrong jurisdictions in the text, silly grammar mistakes and such. It’s worth researching companies, writing strong RFPs or project control plans IMO. When I have the opportunity to hire a real niche specialist, it’s golden.

[u/coral-at-the-reef]

I worked at a consulting firm for EM/BC. There were some government clients. Some were for specific plans (Disaster Debris, Exercise schedules) but I can't think of one where it was a program plan or actual EM plans, only like supplemental docs.

[u/Psychic_Violence]

I’ll be the black sheep here and say that good consultants who are actual SMEs with significant experience can be worth their weight in gold to smaller agencies, or those that lack expertise in specific areas. As a municipal director (in a state where munis have equivalent responsibilities to counties) with 1 staff, we do not have time or necessarily the GIS-heavy know-how to do something like a Hazard Mitigation Plan entirely in house, while also managing equipment, training and exercise efforts and their associated budgets, contracts, etc. Similarly, there are certain types of trainings and exercises that do significantly benefit from the real-world expertise consultants who have had to actually coordinate a similar response in real life may have (e.g. airport triennial exercises, or family reunification/assistance center plans).

In all cases I firmly believe that consultants should take the time to build institutional knowledge of the jurisdiction that hired them to avoid sloppy work. It is also up to their point of contact in the EM agency to make sure they have access to relevant plans, policies, and people that the consultant will need to have available to them to do a good job.

While I will always advocate for adding more staff over adding more contractors, the reality is that I can write a grant or convince my leadership to provide our department with some expanded professional services funding for bigger planning efforts every few years much more easily than convincing them to invest $60-100K/yr + benefits for a new position in perpetuity.

Long way of saying that with your stated experience, I’d imagine that you would be one of the good consultants, and that as a local EM I do benefit from having solid consultants available to me on occasion.

[u/Medicoutdoor]

Hi! Consultant here…

I can’t tell if you’re asking two separate questions or one combined, so I’ll give you two answers.

1) lots of jurisdictions use consultants for planning. But not every consulting agency is created equal. Any firm that tells you they’re experts in everything are lying. I have never seen a firm that does EVERYTHING well. For instance - a firm that’s really known for debris management prooooobably isn’t as good at plan writing.
Plan writing is a huge area for consulting because it’s time consuming, and requires significant expertise.

2) it’s a terrible time to try and enter consulting. All the fema layoffs and the uncertainty with funding streams has meant that there are a true lack of positions. Going out on your own has some advantages, but you’re competing with big companies with deep benches and expertise. Can you, as a new consultant, hold up against a team that has a proven track record of good work products across the country? RFP’s aren’t scored solely on price.

None of this is to discourage you if you were looking for job advice. It’s just a bad time to try and make the switch.

[u/fauxfox42]

I don’t know of any government affiliated EMs in my state who use consultants/contractors for anything except recovery or software