Articles

Are you always confident about the fees you charge for your work?

At some point, regardless of whether you work in an organisation or for yourself, there is the dilemma of trying to figure out how much to charge for your services. Charge too high and you might price yourself out of the market and lose the business. Charge too low, and you are leaving money on the table and potentially painting yourself into a corner, from which it can be difficult to recover.

Depending on your field or specialty, your fellow consultants, contractors and service providers might not be as forthcoming with such information as you might have hoped. However, even if you figured out how much to charge, it is still always beneficial to be able to consider it within the context of what your peers might be charging.

However, for those of you who work in the Caribbean region, it is not only a challenge to get sense of what professional fee rates might obtain in an individual country, but also across the region. In light of the insulation and isolation consultants, contractors and service providers are likely to feel from time to time, we have created a Survey of Consulting, Contracting and Services Provision Fees Charged in the Caribbean, which we ask that you complete.

The survey consists of 16 questions, and could be completed in less than ten (10) minutes. Please note that we do not ask for any personally identifiable information; hence we ask that you be as honest as possible in your responses. Ultimately, we are trying to get – and eventually share with you – as accurate a picture as possible of the professional fees being charged for local, regional and internationally-funded projects.

Finally, we also ask that you share this survey with your fellow consultants, contractors and service providers to help us get as wide a sample as possible, and thus more authoritative results.

We look forward to your support!

(Photo:  cybrgrl, flickr)

Welcome to the new and improved Project Calls!

This new Project Calls website has been a long time coming!

As with most ventures, Project Calls started off trying to solve a problem: to reduce the time Independent Consultants and Contractors spend searching for project opportunities. Although searching for work opportunities is a necessary part of Consultant’s and Contractor’s life, it can be tedious, definitely time consuming, but also eats away valuable time that could be spent on paid, or otherwise productive, work.

From all indications, our mailing list subscribers have found Project Calls a valuable resource to help them be more aware of the opportunities across the region. With that knowledge, they can then decide whether on not to bid on a particular opportunity. The key though is being armed the informations not order to make an informed decision.

One of observations over the past 5 to 10 years, particularly since the global financial crisis in 2008, is the fact that competition for projects has gotten stiff. More Caribbean people seem to be working as Consultants and Contractors, but still for some of the larger tenders, say over USD 50,000, they still tend to be dominated by the more recognized, international/global firms.

Hence, in addition to collating Caribbean project opportunities, we eventually intend to share insights, tools and resources, all geared towards improving the quality of bids our subscribers prepare and submit, but ultimately, doing our part to help the Caribbean Consultant not only survive, but thrive!