DBA 8090 Module 2 Written Assignment: A Proposal and Deliverable Schedule for a Marine Contractor Example

Four Margin Points in Ten Weeks: A Consulting Proposal and Deliverable Schedule for Cedar Run Marine Construction

Student Name

Doctor of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

DBA-8090: Organizational Consulting: Process Consultation, Avocation, and Business Sustainability

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Margin Points in Ten Weeks: A Consulting Proposal and Deliverable Schedule for Cedar Run Marine Construction

From Conversation to Agreement

Two meetings followed the first call. The second included Lauren, who manages finance, and Danny, who runs field operations. Lauren brought a summary of 22 recent municipal and marina jobs; Danny brought a list of jobs where crews found conditions the estimate had not expected, such as old timber piles, debris under the bulkhead line or tide windows shorter than planned. By the end, Frank no longer asked who was pricing low. He asked why the company kept losing money on the work it knew best. This assignment turns that shift into a written agreement.

What the Client Wants and What I Offer

Block (2011) treats contracting as an explicit exchange of wants: what the client needs from the consultant and what the consultant needs from the client for the work to succeed. Both lists belong in writing.

The last row matters most. Frank agreed that no personnel decision would be made from the analysis until the full group had reviewed it. Without that line, staff would have good reason to protect themselves during interviews, and the data would suffer.

Objectives, Measures and Value

Weiss (2011) argues that a proposal should rest on three elements agreed before it is written: objectives, the business outcomes the client wants; measures, the evidence that will show progress; and value, the worth of reaching the objectives to the client. Writing them in the client's words makes the proposal a summary of agreements rather than a sales document.

Objective 1: Explain where estimated and actual costs diverge on public and marina work. Measure: a line-item comparison of estimate and final cost for all 22 jobs, reviewed and accepted by both estimators.

Objective 2: Close the gap between estimating and field execution. Measure: a written hand-off routine used on every new job above $250,000, with the superintendent's signature on the estimate assumptions.

Objective 3: Recover margin on new work. Measure: average job margin on public and marina work back to at least 7 percent over the next twelve months, tracked by Lauren monthly.

Value: Cedar Run's public and marina work runs about $9 million a year. Recovering four points of margin on that volume is worth roughly $360,000 a year, before any effect on bonding capacity, which depends on the firm's financial statements. Frank also named a value that is not financial: he wants the business in shape for Lauren and Danny to take over within five years. Le Breton-Miller et al. (2004) found that effective succession in family firms depends on preparing the next generation and clarifying roles well before the handover, so building a shared estimating and field routine with Lauren and Danny serves that goal directly.

Scope and Boundaries

Kitay and Wright (2004) found that consultants occupy varied positions at the edge of client organizations, from outside experts to people who act much like insiders, and that unclear boundaries create risk for both sides. The proposal sets four boundaries. I will not evaluate individual employees for hiring or firing. I will not prepare bids or sign estimates. I will not advise on legal disputes over two jobs now in claims with a township. Implementation of the hand-off routine beyond the first three new jobs belongs to Danny and the superintendents, with my support by phone.

Fee Options

Weiss (2021) recommends offering the client options of rising value and fixed fees, so the client chooses how much help to buy instead of whether to buy. The proposal offers three.

Option A, $24,000: job-cost analysis of the 22 jobs, interviews and a findings workshop.

Option B, $38,000: Option A plus design of the estimating-to-field hand-off routine and its use on the first three new jobs.

Option C, $52,000: Option B plus monthly margin reviews with Lauren and Danny for six months and a review of estimating assumptions for tide work and pile driving.

Each fee is fixed, payable half at signing and half at the findings workshop. A fixed fee removes the incentive to prolong the work and lets Frank compare cost with the $360,000 value.

Deliverable Schedule

Conditions That Could Change the Plan

Two risks could change the schedule. If job files are incomplete, the comparison will use the 15 jobs with full records and say so. If the claims with the township expand, Frank may limit interviews on those jobs; the analysis will then exclude them and report the gap.

How the Agreement Will Be Kept Honest

A proposal is only useful if both sides can tell whether it is working. Three checks are built in. At the end of week 4, Lauren and I will report to Frank whether the job files support the comparison or whether the scope should shrink. At the findings workshop, each objective will be marked as met, partly met or not met, in front of the staff who took part. And six months after the engagement, Lauren will send me the margin figures so we can both see whether Objective 3 held. If it did not, I will return for one review session at no fee, which gives Frank some protection and gives me a reason to design changes that last.

Conclusion

The proposal turns a request to find a weak estimator into an agreement about margin, measures and shared work. Its parts follow from Module 1's choice of a collaborative role: the family agrees to objectives in their own terms, staff are protected during diagnosis, fees are fixed against value, and the ten-week schedule ends with a routine the company will run without me.

References

Block, P. (2011). Flawless consulting: A guide to getting your expertise used (3rd ed.). Pfeiffer.

Kitay, J., & Wright, C. (2004). Take the money and run? Organisational boundaries and consultants' roles. The Service Industries Journal, 24(3), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/0264206042000247731

Le Breton-Miller, I., Miller, D., & Steier, L. P. (2004). Toward an integrative model of effective FOB succession. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 28(4), 305-328. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6520.2004.00047.x

Weiss, A. (2011). Million dollar consulting proposals: How to write a proposal that's accepted every time. Wiley.

Weiss, A. (2021). Million dollar consulting: The professional's guide to growing a practice (6th ed.). McGraw-Hill.