7.3Terms of reference

Terms of reference (see box 7.3) are the initial statement of the work to be undertaken by a consultant. Some clients, who prefer to do their own problem identification and diagnosis, may prepare terms of reference for the assignment before talking to any consultant. Others may draft the terms of reference after the preliminary problem diagnosis done by a consultant. They may use one consultant specifically for preliminary diagnosis and drafting terms of reference. These terms are then used for initiating a formal selection procedure to designate another consultant who will execute the assignment. The consultant who was employed for drafting the terms of reference may even be excluded from the next phase. Still others may not use any formal terms of reference, but leave the definition of the work to be done to the consulting contract.

The main reasons for these different practices are explained below.

(1)If terms of reference are used:

–the client’s policy is to do as much analytical and planning work as possible before considering to use a consultant; often this will be the case with assignments dealing with relatively narrow and well-defined technical issues;

–the client (usually in the public sector) is obliged by existing regulations to draft formal terms of reference, and obtain approval of them, as an initial step in a formal consultant selection procedure.