Solutions
Answer the resourcing question before it becomes a problem.
Advisory work on resourcing strategy, workforce planning, mobilisation and labour market reality — delivered as documents you can act on.
Consultancy Services
Most resourcing failures on major programmes are decided long before anyone tries to recruit. The labour curve was never modelled by discipline. The rate assumption in the bid came from the last project in a different region. Mobilisation was planned as a date rather than a process. By the time the requisitions land, the options have already narrowed.
Consultancy Services is the work that happens earlier: modelling demand, testing whether the market can actually supply it, planning mobilisation properly, and making sure the engagement models and compliance position stand up. The output is a document your programme team can use — a plan, a model, a benchmark — not a slide deck and a proposal.
Who it’s for
Is this the right fit?
This is work for people making resourcing decisions with real consequences, usually before the recruitment phase begins.
Programme and project directors
Ahead of sanction or contract award, when the labour assumption underpins the schedule and the business case.
Bid and tender teams
Pricing the labour element of a submission and needing to know whether the resource assumption survives contact with the market.
HR and talent leaders
Designing a resourcing operating model, rationalising a supply chain, or reviewing compliance and IR35 readiness across a portfolio.
PMO and workforce planning functions
Building a demand model by discipline and time-phasing it against the programme rather than a headcount total.
When it’s not the right fit
If you already know what you need and simply need it filled, this is an unnecessary step — go straight to Workforce Solutions. We would rather say that than sell a study.
What’s included
What you actually get.
Resourcing strategy and operating model
How the programme should be resourced across direct hire, contract, managed packages and subcontract — with the trade-offs, cost implications and control consequences of each set out rather than asserted.
Workforce planning and demand modelling
Time-phased demand by discipline and grade, built from the programme rather than from a headcount total, with peaks, ramp rates and the point at which the plan exceeds what the market can supply.
Labour market and rate benchmarking
What disciplines are genuinely paying by region and sector, where competing programmes are drawing from the same pool, and how far a rate assumption is from reality. Sources are stated so you can weigh them.
Mobilisation and demobilisation planning
The full path to productive: sourcing lead times, vetting and clearance, medicals, inductions, accommodation and travel, ramp curves — and a demobilisation plan so the end of a campaign is not improvised.
Bid and tender labour support
Testing the resource assumption behind a submission, availability sense-checking, and rate build-ups you can defend in a clarification meeting.
Compliance and IR35 readiness review
Engagement models across the supply chain, off-payroll process and record-keeping, umbrella and payroll intermediary risk, and where the practice differs from the policy.
Supply chain and PSL design
Rationalising or rebuilding a supplier list, writing terms and service levels that mean something, and putting measurement in place that suppliers cannot game.
Skills, local content and early careers
Practical plans for apprentice, trainee and local-hire commitments — the kind attached to nuclear new build, offshore wind and major infrastructure consents — designed to be delivered rather than reported.
How it works
From first call to close-out.
- 1
Scoping the question
A short session to agree the decision the work needs to support, the deliverable, the timescale and what success looks like. If the question is smaller than you thought, we scope it smaller.
- 2
Discovery
Programme and schedule data, existing resource plans, current supplier and rate information, and interviews with the people who actually resource the work. We are explicit about what data we need and what we can proceed without.
- 3
Analysis and modelling
Building the demand model, benchmark or option appraisal — and testing it against live market availability rather than desk research alone.
- 4
Recommendations and roadmap
A written deliverable with the findings, the options, the trade-offs and a sequenced set of actions with owners. Presented and worked through with your team, not emailed over.
- 5
Implementation support
Optional and separately scoped: helping stand up what was recommended, whether that is a workforce plan in operation, a rebuilt PSL, or a mobilisation running to the plan.
How we charge
The commercial model, plainly.
Consultancy is bought as defined deliverables. We scope it, price it and agree what you receive before starting, so you are buying a document and a decision rather than open-ended time.
Fixed fee for a defined piece
The default. A written scope, a stated deliverable, an agreed date and a fixed price. Extensions are re-scoped rather than absorbed into a growing invoice.
Day rate for advisory support
Where the work is genuinely open-ended — sitting alongside a mobilisation or a bid — an agreed day rate with a capped commitment you control.
Retained advisory
An ongoing arrangement for programmes needing continuous workforce planning input, with a defined monthly scope rather than vague availability.
Worth saying out loud
A fair question is whether a resourcing partner can give independent resourcing advice. Our answer: consultancy is scoped, priced and delivered separately from supply, there is no obligation to use us for delivery afterwards, and where a recommendation would send work our way we say so in the document. If the right answer is to build the capability in house or to keep your incumbent supplier, that is what the report will say.
Typical engagements
What this looks like in practice.
- A two-week rate and availability benchmark to support a tender submission
- A time-phased workforce plan by discipline for a multi-year new-build package
- A mobilisation plan for a large offshore campaign, from sourcing lead times to accommodation
- An IR35 and engagement-model readiness review across a contractor population
- A supply chain and PSL redesign with service levels and measurement
- A local content and early careers plan attached to a consent commitment
Illustrative engagement
Illustrative — not a named clientAn offshore wind developer
The scenario below is illustrative — written to show the shape of an advisory engagement. It is not a description of an identified customer or a claimed result.
A developer approaching a final investment decision has a resource assumption in the business case built from a previous project in a different region. The schedule assumes a ramp rate for high-voltage and commissioning disciplines that nobody has tested against what else is being built at the same time in the same labour catchment.
The work is unromantic and useful: rebuild the demand curve by discipline and time-phase it against the actual programme; test the peak against live market availability and the other programmes competing for the same people; benchmark the rate assumptions by region; and map the real path to productive, including vetting, medicals, offshore tickets and berth availability.
The deliverable is a model the programme team can keep using and a short set of decisions — where the plan needs to change, where the rate assumption needs to move, and which two disciplines need pipelining now rather than at award. Some of those decisions point towards using a supplier. Some point towards direct hire. The report says which is which.
Questions
The things clients ask first.
- Do we have to use NE Project Solutions for delivery afterwards?
- No. Consultancy is scoped and priced as its own engagement with no supply commitment attached. Clients regularly take the output and deliver it themselves or with an incumbent supplier, and that is a perfectly good outcome.
- How do you avoid marking your own homework?
- By being open about the conflict rather than pretending it does not exist. Consultancy is delivered separately from supply, recommendations that would route work to us are flagged as such in the document, and where you want genuine independence on a supplier decision we will say plainly that you should have someone with no supply interest review it.
- Where does your benchmarking data come from?
- Our own placement and offer data, live market testing with candidates in the relevant disciplines, published and public sources, and client-supplied data where available. We state which is which in the deliverable, along with sample size and limitations, so you can judge how much weight a figure carries. We do not present a confident number that rests on a thin base.
- What do you need from us to start?
- Usually the programme or schedule, any existing resource plan, current rate and supplier information, and access to two or three people who actually do the resourcing. If some of that does not exist, that is often part of the finding — we will scope around it rather than stall.
- How long does a piece of work take?
- A focused benchmark or option appraisal is typically a couple of weeks. A full workforce plan or mobilisation plan for a major programme is longer and depends heavily on data availability. We give you a date in the scoping document and tell you early if it is going to move.
- Can this run alongside work you are already delivering for us?
- Yes, and it often does — a mobilisation plan while contract supply is running, for example. We keep the commercial arrangements separate so the advisory work is not quietly funded by the supply margin, and so you can end one without disturbing the other.
Where it applies
Consultancy Services by sector.
The model is the same across all eleven sectors we work in. What changes is the discipline mix and the certification that gates site access — each sector page sets out both, and how this pillar applies there.
- Oil & GasUpstream, midstream and downstream projects and turnarounds.
- NuclearNew build, operations and decommissioning programmes.
- RenewablesOffshore & onshore wind, solar and storage.
- UtilitiesTransmission, distribution and network upgrades.
- InfrastructureMajor civils, transport and public works.
- PowerGeneration, grid and interconnector projects.
- WaterTreatment, networks and AMP-cycle delivery.
- Data CentresHyperscale and colocation build & fit-out.
- ManufacturingProcess, plant and heavy industry.
- ChemicalPetrochemical and process safety-critical work.
- PharmaGMP facilities and capital projects.
Also from NE Project Solutions
The other two ways we deliver.
Workforce Solutions
Contract, permanent and project-based talent across every discipline — sourced, technically screened and compliance-checked before anyone reaches your gate.
Explore Workforce SolutionsManaged Project Services
Whole packages of work delivered by a NE Project Solutions-managed team, against a statement of work, with supervision, reporting and a single point of accountability.
Explore Managed Project ServicesReady when you are
Got a resourcing decision to make?
Tell us the question you are trying to answer. If it needs a piece of work we will scope it; if it can be answered in a conversation we will just answer it.