Awards programmes
Designing and running awards programmes with judging criteria, conflict management and transparency that make the result mean something.
Criteria specific enough that two judges reach the same answer for the same entry.
Panels, scoring and conflict of interest handling that survive being questioned by an unsuccessful entrant.
Entry, shortlisting and announcement run to a published timetable.
We publish these because most of the value in hiring anyone is knowing which mistakes are common, and that knowledge is not worth hiding.
An award where entry fee correlates with outcome destroys its own value, and entrants work it out quickly.
A judge with a commercial relationship to an entrant taints the whole category, not just that entry.
Including when the answer is that you do not need what you came to ask for. Anyone who never says that is not giving you information, they are giving you an invoice.
Where something needs a legal opinion, a financial audit or a clinical judgement, we will say so and stop rather than improvise past the edge of what we do.
Tell us the situation rather than the service you think you need. We would rather start from your problem.