Consulting Team Travel to Client Sites and Away Days

The rhythm of a consulting week

A traditional engagement runs on a weekly cycle: out on Monday morning to the client site, on site through the middle of the week, back to the home office or home address on Thursday evening. The same three to six people travel together, to the same place, at roughly the same times, for the duration of a project. That repetition is exactly the pattern that suits a standing arrangement, because the detail barely changes from week to week.

What does change is the end of the engagement. Projects extend, phases finish early and a team can be redeployed to a different region with a week of notice, so the arrangement needs to be as easy to amend as it is to repeat. The practical version of that is a standing pattern held under an account, with a named person on the engagement who can adjust it, rather than a set of individual bookings that have to be recreated each time the work moves.

Arriving at a client site

Client sites impose their own rules: visitor registration, escorted access, restricted parking and in some sectors a security check that takes longer than anyone plans for. Arriving with fifteen minutes in hand is not a courtesy but a practical necessity, particularly on the first morning of an engagement when badges have not yet been issued. Knowing which entrance the team should use, and where a vehicle can set down without blocking a service route, saves the same fifteen minutes every week thereafter.

Team splits and who travels with whom

Consulting teams rarely move as a single block. A partner may join for a Tuesday steering committee only, a specialist may fly in for two days, and junior team members often travel separately because their week starts earlier. Rather than one large vehicle carrying everyone occasionally, the pattern that works is a defined core group with additional arrangements layered on, so a partner attending for one day does not disrupt the standing booking.

• Name the core team who travel every week
• Flag partner or specialist visits as separate arrangements
• Confirm whether the return leg carries the same passengers
• Say where each person is dropped on the Thursday run

Offsites, training days and shuttles

Away days and training events concentrate a large group at a country hotel or a conference venue for a day or two, usually somewhere with a station a fair distance away. The transport problem is arrival compression: forty people converging in a ninety-minute window, then leaving in an even tighter one. Running scheduled shuttles from a nominated station or office, rather than individual transfers, is the usual answer and needs the passenger list confirmed a few days ahead.

Engagement codes and client recharge

Almost every consulting firm needs travel to be attributed to an engagement, and a good many need to know whether a cost is chargeable to the client or absorbed by the firm. Capturing the engagement or project code at the point of booking is what makes that attribution possible, and it is far quicker than reconciling a month of journeys afterwards. Whether a given cost is recoverable under the engagement letter is a question for the engagement partner rather than for a transport supplier.

Plan your chauffeur journey

London Chauffeurs provides itinerary-led private travel for airport transfers, executive travel, private aviation, events and long-distance UK journeys. Availability and pricing are confirmed for the requested itinerary.

Frequently asked questions