Of all the arguments for using the charrette method, none comes into sharper focus in times like these than the bang-for-the-buck advantage. Well-planned, well-managed charrettes can save both public and private sector clients a ton of time and money. But here’s the hitch: To realize the savings, clients have to take on more responsibility in each of the three phases of the process. Which means charrette managers have to get better at coaching clients on how to assume ownership. Even with lower budgets, planning results can actually improve with more focused client participation.

Here’s what’s happening: For the better part of the last decade, the idea-to-action magic of charrettes disguised client management problems by outsourcing staff responsibilities to planning consultants. But staffing up to temporarily assume project management duties and a host of other responsibilities pushed consultant budgets higher and higher. Which was no problem when developers were building communities where lot values doubled and tripled before horizontal infrastructure was complete or when municipal clients could count on fat federal and state planning grants. But those days are over. Now developers are counting pennies, and municipal clients are demanding planning processes at a fraction of what they would have paid a year ago.

Here’s how to adapt to a new era: First of all, we can’t compromise on the basic structure of the charrette-centered, three-phase planning process. It’s the process that gives the best chance of delivering meaningful results. Without achieving results in line with project goals, plans — and planners — flop. And failure is no less acceptable at bargain prices than at top dollar.

Instead of jeopardizing outcomes with scaled-down deliverables, it’s time to scale up in-kind services from clients. For charrette planners, this means spending more time teaching clients how to do what they should be doing anyway — listening to communities, engaging the media successfully, and preparing staff to participate actively in the charrette to understand the plan and to take responsibility for its implementation. Instead of using consultants to provide turn-key processes that produce implementation-ready plans, clients must own the process and the product. Together, consultants and clients have to craft a strategy that transfers important responsibilities to client teams trained and supported by the consulting experts. 

Here’s how to do it on a budget: The new teaching/training phase has to be integrated into the charrette-prep stage and continued during the charrette itself so the client’s staff can take over when the consulting team leaves town. While this may mean beefing up on-site work pre-charrette, it will likely require only a couple consulting team members and should allow for streamlining a core charrette and post-charrette team supplemented with newly trained client staff.

Client and consultant have to agree ahead of time (and formalize their agreement in the contract) on the extent of the enhanced services. Among categories to target: Technical support for mapping and data assembly, IT, printing, copying, and scanning; and charrette logistics, including planning and continuous on-site support for food, lodging, and transportation.

Here’s the caution: Experienced planning firms will remind us that clients often promise to provide this kind of support but rarely dedicate people with the skills and the time to perform at the same level as those a consulting team would hire for the job. So in return for reducing the overall budget, consultants should request the same specificity about assigned client staff (experience and committed hours, for instance) that clients demand of consultants in RFPs.

The point is to make it clear that the cost of the process is fixed. Expenses don’t go down because clients’ resources are reduced. This is a cost transfer arrangement in which a client may substantially reduce fees to consultants by assuring that expenses and responsibilities the consulting team would otherwise bear are being assumed by client staff trained and supported by the consulting team. 

Here’s a final word from Andres Duany on the cost-to-responsibility ratio: “A potential client will ask me: ‘How much is this going to cost?’ And I say, ‘I can give you a beautiful master plan or a practical code for this much. But if you want me to fix your politics or your management problems at the same time, it will cost you five times as much.’”