Consulting Firms in Washington, DC Area

Just curious - aside from the big players in the Washington DC area like BAH, are there any other smaller boutique/niche consulting shops in the Washington DC area? I'm looking a few up right now through Google, but I figure someone in the area will probably have a better grasp on things. Thanks guys!

 

You might want to take a look at the Corporate Executive Board. It's not consulting in the sense of MBB... more like best practices research, but I think they're looking for a similar skillset. There's also their sister company, The Advisory Board Company that focuses on healthcare.

 

Applied Predictive Technologies is located in DC. It's not consulting in the traditional sense like MBB. All their recommendations to clients are driven by experiments grounded in data.

Consulting case interview casebooks and guides www.simplythecase.com
 

Exit Ops: I think the people I know who worked there all went on to grad school (Law/Med), but I'm sure you can do other things. Culture: Hours aren't that bad, pretty young/fun. Pay: Not as good as m/b/b, but definitely better than working on the hill (40-50k?) Skillset: Research/interview report-writing. Can get exposure to different parts of business (verticals or horizontals).

 
ringtailedlemur:
Exit Ops: I think the people I know who worked there all went on to grad school (Law/Med), but I'm sure you can do other things. Culture: Hours aren't that bad, pretty young/fun. Pay: Not as good as m/b/b, but definitely better than working on the hill (40-50k?) Skillset: Research/interview report-writing. Can get exposure to different parts of business (verticals or horizontals).
building on the previous thread, I actually have seen someone breaking into H/S/W MBA
 
Best Response

Well Booz Allen is the largest Federal contractor with Deloitte just behind them. Booz Allen on a whole has been declining. If you are trying to decide between Booz Allen and Deloitte, I would go Deloitte. Along the same lines, the other Big 4 firms all have Public Sector practices.

Accenture.... is more of an IT Consulting powerhouse, not strategy/management consulting. That said, the nature of Federal consulting is shifting more to the IT and staff augmentation/operational work, than pure strategy or management consulting.

"Just trying to find somewhere with some job security! I would love any and all feedback on these firms."

If you want job security, you wont necessarily find that in Federal consulting. It is NOT like working FOR the government. Your clients are government, but your firm can easily cut you for under-performing, lack of work, etc. For example, during the furloughs a couple years ago, a number of mid-size consulting firms laid off a ton of people. Unrelated to the furloughs, Booz Allen laid off over 3k staff a few years ago.

 

McKinsey was the big dog in govt strategy work, but BCG has made a pretty big push; they just released a high-profile report on the SEC so they'll be gaining a lot of traction i bet. if you're there for 2 years and want to do govt work, i'd go McKinsey; if you're there to make a career (i.e. post mba) i'd pick based on culture.

Booz or bah or whichever is doing the non-defense consulting is largely implementation and on-the-ground support. Not a lot of high-level strategy work - not that that's necessarily a bad thing, that sort of work can be a lot more interesting as a entry-level analyst than watching your managers leave you behind in the team room when they go talk to the clients.

Bain's non-existent in government work.

 

Interesting, what gives you guys the sense BCG is a close second? Anything other than that SEC report?

My sense was that McK is pretty entrenched within a few govt. orgs, and everyone else was late to the party...

Life, liberty and the pursuit of Starwood Points
 

petergibbons - the number of BCG people i know who are suddenly catching the 7 am flight to dc shot upwards a few months ago. generally a pretty good sign.

In addition, the general vibe in consulting is that the paradigm's shifted a bit - BCG made up a lot of ground on McKinsey in the last couple years, and rajat hasn't been helping the ol' McKinsey name so much. the sec report is a good signal to me that the tide is changing... of course, it could be changing for bain and bah, too...

who knows. perhaps someone who openly works at mckinsey or BCG or bain can comment further. i've added what i could without compromising my anonymity, which i value.

 

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