By Jim Bishop, President, Beak International Incorporated
As we moved from the 20th to the 21st century, there was a general air of guarded optimism in the environmental consulting sector. One could read articles in this very magazine about the changes in the consulting engineering industry, about the benefits of consolidation and the resulting improvement due to multidimensionism and fuller servicing, and how all this might ward off the bête noire of the consulting fraternity - the "low bid ethos".
Then along came September 11, 2001, with its still unbelievable violence and a lingering legacy of shock, disbelief, fear and paranoia. Continuing threats of more doomed aircraft and horrors like anthrax in the hands of maniacs are reported almost gleefully by our media, who have seldom had such a run of good/bad news.
The events of September 11 are likely to result in a certain amount of international "bunkering", but this understandable national introversion will eventually be supplemented by a gradual awakening of the need for all nations, religions, races - in short, all normal people - to pull together and act as one, which is basically what happened one month after the terrorist attacks.
I believe that the environmental consulting sector, engineer and scientist alike, must now maintain or return to a lean and mean operating approach. The difficulty with this approach lies in the definition of lean and mean. Companies must take care that lean doesn't become gaunt and that mean doesn't imply pettiness, miserliness and poor quality.
Nobody can predict exactly what will happen with Canada's economy, or the world economy, following September 11, but according to most economists, the attacks came at a time when the US economy was already shaky, and now there will be 'downward pressures' on business activity for the next few quarters.
Experienced investment advisors point out that similar downturns caused by war, revolt, and other events typically rebound after a lag time of 3-6 quarters, and it is expected that the overall economy will recover as it has in the past. The very nature of the environmental consulting sector means we may be somewhat buffered from the immediate downturn, experience a slowdown over the next year, then slowly recover as the rebound occurs.
As we become accustomed to life after the events of September 11, the consulting industry will cleave to the traits that have characterized it from the beginning, and which have sustained it through the political and financial upheavals of the 1990s and through the ongoing fallout from Walkerton.
As the international business community gradually sets its new course, these traits have been and remain our templates for success: quality, value and integrity. It is the everyday sustenance of our sector to work hand-in-hand with companies, agencies, and professionals who obviously understand and respect these very same principles; it is up to us to maintain and reconfirm these values in all the work we do.
The simple fact of the matter is that consultants who are seen to maintain quality, value and integrity will build trust with their clients, and trust generates confidence. And if there is one thing our collective economy needs right now, it is confidence.
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