Poor job management - approaching graduate engineers to do design work and engaging senior engineers to rubber stamp review the work afterwards instead of having the senior people define the work method and guide the juniors.
Very tight purse strings - refusal to invest in standards, text books or software without being able to bill the cost to a client job.
Little regard for staff development - I resorted to taking leave and paying for training and conferences myself, even when I had no billable work and management agreed that the training appeared useful.
Rigid management systems that may be appropriate to projects like the reconstruction of Iraq but are prohibitively inefficient to conducting successful small consultancy jobs.
Little regard for solving the client's problem on joint venture projects. The emphasis appeared to be on ensuring the maximum proportion of staff on the job, extending the duration of the project and securing extra work. This resulted in constantly changing scope and very low job satisfaction for design engineers.
Extreme pressure for staff to book time to billable jobs - non-billable charge codes are very rarely made available, not even for the end of year when the office closes at midday. Staff are therefore required to work excessive overtime or fabricate timesheets, billing clients for work that has not been performed.
