I am looking for some guidance on how much travel is involved in being a consultant. I am aware the profession requires working at the clients premises, but I don't know how much travel is actually involved.For a project how much, on average, would you be away from home? Would it be Monday-Friday every week?Grad schemes say be prepared to travel, but they don't give much more info.Thanks.

Dear graduate - although this does vary considerably with the type of work, the type of firm, the type of project, the type of client and the point of time you are at within the overall project - an average estimate would be 4 days a week at the client site - flying, training, or driving out on Monday morning - returning Thursday night. This would be for out of town projects (especially international!). In-town projects, near-town or stricter projects might have 5 days on a client site.Don't dellude yourself when you enter into Consulting - flexibility is required. However this should not be an invite to sell your soul. Some compensation packages and promotion ladders might dictate that you should do this - but you need to weigh this up yourself. For the standard recruiting giants - no one expects you to give up your life for the company - and from my own personal experience, provided you push for it - you can achieve some concessions for a healthy work-life balance. Such concessions might be returning home mid-week depending upon the distance, working Friday from home, spending every 4th week working from the home office.

Dear Maurice,Thanks for the advice. So on average, as a consultant you would expect to spend 3 out of four weeks working at a clients site? Naively, thats more than I expected.In terms of the in-town projects, where you are required to work at the clients site, do you usually live at home and commute or do most people stay in hotels etc close to the site? If you are in the same town, would commuting be a possiblity.Thanks again.

Dear graduate - the 3 out of 4 weeks would be an exceptional case, based upon how stringent your firm is. More likely it will be 4 days a week, every week at the client site. So over 75% of your time on site. In town projects will usually be commuting (hotel costs bring down the project's margin considerably) - and this would be the preference. For our of towners the firm will usually have a policy that if the commuting is over 90 minutes or 2 hours, then can stay in a hotel - although this will not be mandatory (if you want to commute > 4 hours a day then this is up to you ;-) But yes - project managers will love you if you commute - they don't have to pay for you to stay in a hotel!

Maurice, I don't know what kind of firm you work for, but for most consulting organisations the cost of a hotel doesn't eat into margins at all -- the cost is passed on to the client as an expense.graduate, to answer your question regarding travel: it depends, on the firm, the client, the location, and the engagement manager. I've worked on projects where there was lots of flexibility and people worked from home 2-3 days a week, and I've worked on other projects where I was required to be on-site 5 days a week.Geography matters, too. It may be practical to fly back-and-forth to Amsterdam each week, but if you've got a six month gig in Singapore or India, you'd better count on spending some weekends away from home as well.How much travel you do also has a lot to do with the type of firm you work for -- big international firms with big international clients will obviously involve a lot more travel than regional firms consulting to a local client base. Whether this is a good or bad thing is largely a question of perspective.

In my experience Village Idiot, it's actually quite common to establish a budget which includes an component made up from an estimate (usually overinflated) of potential expenses. The project expenses are then managed accordingly.Well done, this can boost margins, but if the expenses are underestimated then the results can be a very unpleasant project experience.EC

EC, that sounds like one of those funny-money games than my last company used to play. Sure, you can track margin against the overall cost of the project (including expenses), but that seems like a silly way to run a business. Your *real* margin is made on the hours you bill vs. the hours you pay people to work.I've never come across a company that charges anything other than actuals (or actuals plus a small mark-up for admin) when it comes to expenses, so there should never be an overage/underage in this regard.As a rule of thumb, we always say that the client should expect around 10% of the project cost for expenses -- and if we seriously exceed this (without agreeing with the client first), we may have to eat some of it -- which genuinely erodes margins. But that's exceptionally rare.

Hi Village Idiot,With my current employer it depends on the terms suggested by the client - many of our clients want fixed-price (inclusive of expenses) rather than time and materials deals. I'd estimate the split at about 30/70 in favour of time & materials, with the fixed-price deals more common in the public sector. In such cases, the real margin is not as you suggest, but is contract value - (labour costs + expenses.)EC

Dear Village Idiot,Do you know of, or can recommend any London based consultancy firms who focus on less travel/try to ensure employees have less away time?There are various graduate consultancy firms I would like to apply for, but I am not really sure which firms may/may not have more travel. I would love to gain a position in strategy consultancy, but any management consultancy experience, bearing in mind I have no consultancy experience, would be grand. Any recommendations are greatly appreciated.

graduate - firstly if travel is an issue don't look at consultancy at all. You must be prepared to travel for consultancy, and if you're not then perhaps you should look at blue chip schemes where there is generally less travel. As for strategy consultancy, there are various levels of this, top tier (BCG, Mckinsey, Bain etc) then the Oliver Wyman's and the similar ones, before you have your Accenture/Capgemini/PwC's. Realistically, unless you have top academics (AAA/AAAA and a 2:1 redbrick/Oxbridge, probably an internship somewhere plus good extra curricular) you wont't get into the top strategy firms and the majority of these.Also, strategy consulting demands the most from your life - you maybe in London but you could be doing 12-15 hour days 5/6 days a week. These are all things you need to think about before making a move into consulting.

Regarding travel, there are three types (in my opinion) which have vastly different implications for your lifestyle.Firstly, there's the "trip up the M1 for a week every now and then" and "occasional flight to europe for a few days once in a blue moon" type of travel. This can be quite pleasant.Then there's the "you'll be working in Halifax for 4 days a week for the forseeable future" type of travel. This sucks, but at least you have a degree of stability to build into your life.Then there's the "unexpected call on a Saturday morning telling you that you WILL be working in china for 8 months starting on monday next week" type of travel. This is not possible for all but the most footloose and fancy free of us.UK travel is better than pan-European travel in my opinion. OK, the hotels and food are usually rubbish, but at least you can get free calls on your mobile and can travel around by car (compare a friday evening drive back home from ipswich vs. a delayed friday evening flight from hamburg). Working abroad is not like being on holiday. I'm not saying that working for 6 months in Peterborough is the pinnacle of high living, but at least it gives you the option of coming back home or commuting once in a while. If you're stuck in Dusseldorf, you can forget any prospect of coming back home on a Tuesday night! Plus, you don't have to spend "Euro 1,50" per minute to call home.

Also, I forgot to mention the value of being able to pop out for a local curry or being able to stop at a service station on the M40 for a yorkie bar and pack of crisps. As opposed to having to sit down and wait for 45 minutes for an overpriced caramelised "Millefeuille" of bitter chocolate and poached pears with orange cream and pistachios served by surly hotel restaurant staff who expect a 20% tip for pouring your "Euro 4,75" 200ml bottle of Coke for you.

recruiter- I have AAB, a first from Manchester Uni, extra curricular activities, various work experience..but no internship, i'm afraid. I am trying to get some consultancy experience/ internship, but i am finding most formal work experience arrangements are at aimed at third year students.

Agree - it depends. Some fixed-fee projects will be based around an expense estimate. However both time and expenses can be under-estimated - as Evil Consultant correctly states. In other cases, actuals may be charged in which case Village Idiot is correct. In a 3rd case a per diem may be agreed with the client to cover travel to/from client site, hotel costs, the internal per diem paid to an employee. In this case, in additional the fixed fee case, cost reduction initiatives are favoured (e.g. appartments Vs hotels, long term travel booking etc etc). The reality for large projects is that the margin is absolutely calculated on a rolling basis - taking expenses into account - and these expenses include hotels. Now perhaps I overestimated the impact of the hotels - in reality I focus more on minimising non-chargeable hours / non chargeable-resources / resource mix / seat charges - however hotel charges can certainly affect the margin - although this will vary with the type of project.

Cynic - your second post was brilliant.

"Also, I forgot to mention the value of being able to pop out for a local curry or being able to stop at a service station on the M40 for a yorkie bar and pack of crisps. As opposed to having to sit down and wait for 45 minutes for an overpriced caramelised "Millefeuille" of bitter chocolate and poached pears with orange cream and pistachios served by surly hotel restaurant staff who expect a 20% tip for pouring your "Euro 4,75" 200ml bottle of Coke for you."Absolutely brilliant post Cynic.Fantastic.Classic!

Up to a certain point any amount of travel is acceptable as long as you get a break from it, or even just a change to a different travel pattern. You miss it when it stops. The worst is five days a week in Europe week in week out. You don't get the stability of being somewhere full time, you don't get Friday in the office to maintain your visibility, and you get no social life.Actually no, the worst was your firm expecting you to pay for all the peak time airfares and hotel bills on your own card and then take as long as possible to reimburse you. It wasn't unusual to be owed 8k-10k.And sorry, yes it was THAT firm.

graduate - one important thing to be aware of is that sometimes the travel requirements can change from the norm if a new sector or major client is targeted by the company you join.

Good point. Things can change very quickly and big projects can seem to appear from nowhere, always on a Friday afternoon and starting on Monday. Fun sometimes, other times you could cheerfully kill someone.

Consultancy is not for you if travel is in any way an issue. I did 10 years for a couple of the big 4 constulancies and the norm was Monday to Friday away from home, always somewhere hideous. I spent a year in a s**t hole in Liverpool, another down south. Almost lost my relationship and my sanity. Don't listen to anyone who says that big 4 will let you work from home one day a week or that it will be glamorous locations!

Most consultancies have seriously eroded the quality of travel class as well in recent years.When I joined one of the Big 4, ten years ago, it was perfectly normal to fly business class even on a short hop european flight. Now I work for a competitor, where even transatlantic travel is the cheapest coach class seat (and travel is in your personal time)The world of travel is really not all that glamarous

"The world of travel is really not all that glamarous"...but neither is it avoidable. It's very much part of the gig if you work for a consultancy, and the original poster would be ill-advised to take a consulting position if he doesn't want to travel.

Travel is in your own time. Frankly, why on earth should it be?I can understand taking the first flight/train on Monday morning, and moving btwn sites mid-week, but why should consultants have to travel on weekends?

Because the client doesn't want to pay you to spend all Monday morning / Friday afternoon travelling. They would rather you were working

So is it because we price our projects based on being there Mon 8am til Fri 5pm?I understand your answer anona, just don't understand why we put up with it.I have always managed to deliver a project on time, without travelling on w/e, because the partners sold/positioned it in the right way in the first place.

Agree with SM that this is the ideal; however I have seen far too many partners promise the earth safe in the knowledge that they won't be the ones working all hours to deliver. Together with EMs who are overly responsive to clients' requests for scope changes in the hope of selling on, these are the herald of doom for a project.EC