It's been a year since the bids I submitted to "Dumpster Fire" management were accepted. You can read about them in my original post on the topic, but yesterday the new bids I submitted for next year were accepted.
The contracts from this past year were a breeze to complete. Contracts with "Dumpster Fire" summed to a total of a little over 600 billable hours, and it took me less than 200 hours to complete. Since my goal for consulting this past year was to bill under 20h/wk, this was a huge boost. My limited contact with them was by email. Responses were curt and feedback was zero, but everything was accepted as-delivered without any changes. This is likely due to the fact that the organization is undergoing another near-total turnover of upper-management for the second time in 4 years, so folks on their way out just needed to make sure "boxes were checked" before leaving.
That brings us to this year's RFP process. As the sole bidder, I was awarded all the contracts I bid on. However, the total is less than half of what I bid on last year. It appears that they will be rolling many of the other contract responsibilities into a VP position, and have hired an executive search firm to manage all of the vacancies. This is at least a better plan than they had a few years ago, so I wish them the best of luck. For me, it's a bit of a bummer to have those lucrative contracts scaled back. Then again, since my "FIRE glide-path" goal is to wind down my consulting, this is an easy win in that regard, so I figured I'd share.
The contracts from this past year were a breeze to complete. Contracts with "Dumpster Fire" summed to a total of a little over 600 billable hours, and it took me less than 200 hours to complete. Since my goal for consulting this past year was to bill under 20h/wk, this was a huge boost. My limited contact with them was by email. Responses were curt and feedback was zero, but everything was accepted as-delivered without any changes. This is likely due to the fact that the organization is undergoing another near-total turnover of upper-management for the second time in 4 years, so folks on their way out just needed to make sure "boxes were checked" before leaving.
That brings us to this year's RFP process. As the sole bidder, I was awarded all the contracts I bid on. However, the total is less than half of what I bid on last year. It appears that they will be rolling many of the other contract responsibilities into a VP position, and have hired an executive search firm to manage all of the vacancies. This is at least a better plan than they had a few years ago, so I wish them the best of luck. For me, it's a bit of a bummer to have those lucrative contracts scaled back. Then again, since my "FIRE glide-path" goal is to wind down my consulting, this is an easy win in that regard, so I figured I'd share.
