Having worked in large corporates (and some government projects) issuing out RFPs, the final decision tends to go: let's just go with an established name like PwC even if they're more expensive (and given we have the budget approved already) as opposed to a small firm down the road that has a great portfolio, because if something goes wrong, I can say I relied on this big, proven firm, and not be criticized for using an unknown firm for such crucial work.

It's frustrating, because these larger firms most always churn out subpar work and this mindset just keeps funding it so they don't improve.

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krapht 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I've seen some small firms crash and burn too, though. The problem is small firms are easy-come, easy-go; they don't have enough reputation at stake. Not sure what a good solution is.

	▲	cmcaleer 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You could have contracted 5 small firms for £400k each (which, for this project seems frankly seems excessive) and even if a couple failed to deliver you'd have gotten 3 separate products to choose the best quality one from, £148k to legally chase up the firms who failed to deliver, and still had £2 million left over. I agree a good solution isn't easy to come up with, but the status quo is certainly an outrageously awful one.
	▲	lmm 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		The large firms' reputation isn't really at stake though. They keep doing crap like this and it never harms their ability to get more contracts.
	▲	deaux 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There are dozens of "small firms" with plenty of reputation at stake. Or how about a "medium-sized firm". There's quite a few, probably a few hundred-thousand, options inbetween "PWC" and "my mate's nephew studying computer science".
	▲	2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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