The Expertise of Public Administration Service

Consulting and Technical Services:  Operational Experience

The firm has conducted more than 2,800 consulting and technical assistance projects for over 1,200 institutions, agencies, universities, state-owned enterprises, and local, regional, and national governments worldwide. Included in this experience is over five decades of continuous consulting services to developing nations.

PAS' professional associates are not only experienced senior consultants, but they also have operational experience in government and the private sector.

Within governments, PAS employees have worked on the following:

  • Local government as city and county managers
  • Public works directors
  • Planners
  • Chiefs of police and fire/rescue
  • Personnel directors
  • Community developers
  • Data processing directors

In state, federal, and international organizations, PAS employees include former department heads and career employees at the highest levels. This government experience is balanced by other PAS employees with equally challenging backgrounds in private sector companies that have reputations of being well managed.

Some of the private sector experience that PAS employees possess include:

  • Engineering and construction
  • Fleet maintenance companies
  • Development and planning companies
  • Banking institutions
  • Transportation companies
  • Builders
  • Architects
  • Electrical and mechanical contractors
  • Information systems and telecommunications

Our Management Capabilities

A considerable strength of PAS is the high level quality of its consultants.  PAS believes that the qualifications of staff assigned to manage or conduct a project are instrumental in order to obtain the objectives of that project.  PAS is therefore very selective in appointing consultants to a project.  PAS has a substantive roster list of consultant, who are in turn selected on the basis of expertise, host country or regional consulting experience, quality of performance, and their ability to work with others.  Qualities which are essential for a project to be carried out successfully are as follows:

  • Highly competent and adaptable individual specialists.  PAS staff members must be well-qualified technically and also have the capacity to work effectively in diverse circumstances.
  • Systematic project management techniques.  PAS project management techniques assure that client needs and requirements are met.  The work program is defined in terms of tasks and time sequences developed jointly by headquarters and field staff; this policy ensures mutual understanding of what is to be accomplished on a project.  This plan of work then provides headquarters with a basis for monitoring progress: regular, simplified reporting can be compared against established benchmarks.  Observations on variances or suggested modifications are fed back to the field staff as required.  Periodic visits of headquarters supervisors can generally be confined to confirming progress; thus, field staff can be advised on broader issues such as updating work plans and resolving special problems.
  • On-site involvement.  PAS performs a substantial portion of professional project work at the work site of the client.  This procedure facilitates coordination of the project, allows for staff availability throughout the term of the project, and ensures accuracy and acceptability of the study results.

Our Associates

The disciplines in which PAS employees have training include management analysis; data processing; civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering; sanitation and sanitary engineering; telecommunications, public safety, and emergency services; public works and utility administration; information system; finance; banking; developmental administration; economics; and personnel administration, and project management, among others.

  • Highway and construction corporations
  • Development banks
  • Land development authorities
  • Harbor authorities
  • Airlines
  • Mortgage banks
  • Trust estates
  • Shipping corporations
  • Storage/warehousing corporations
  • Water and sewerage authorities
  • Smallholder organizations
  • Cooperatives
  • Stock exchanges

It is important to note that PAS has experience as an institution, and its consultants have extensive backgrounds in the public and private sector. This is important since in the United States and certain areas of the other countries in which we work, functions such as city cleaning, waste management, garbage collection, and road construction are largely public sector activities. Thus, the experience PAS has in both the public and private sectors (through privatization studies) is pertinent.

 
Public Administration Service in Africa

PAS's background and experience in providing services to African nations and its understanding of the requirements for successfully conducting projects in developing countries, and in Africa particularly, are essential to the realistic determination of institutional needs, the design of quality training programs, and in the effective implementation of programs and study recommendations.

PAS, in its recent projects in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania has used well-qualified and trained consultants from Ghana and Liberia.