Our way of working
HN Consultants is committed to involving stakeholders in the consultancies to the greatest extent possible. The need for institutionalising and embedding donor programmes in local structures and priorities is clearly recognised, as is the need for coordination with other donors. We promote aid management and effectiveness through a number of instruments.
Aid management and effectiveness
- Solid project/programme cycle management with assignments on identification, formulation, appraisal, monitoring, reviews and evaluation.
- Focus on results, through Logical Framework Approach and “theory of change”
- Better documentation of results, through a number of evaluation methods, including assessment of capacity development, consultant and participatory evaluations. In addition, both document-based, case-based and lessons-learned evaluations.
- Promotion of harmonisation & alignment of donor assistance (including design of multi-donor funds to government and civil society organisations).
Work process, including methods and instruments
All assignments are initiated with a “start-up” meeting with the client to define the expected results and an approach. In most cases, we offer to produce an inception note to be sure that we are on the right track with the consultancy. If field work is included, we often prepare a questionnaire on key issues in relation to the assignment for relevant stakeholders. The questionnaire is useful to trigger reflections on the stakeholders and also as the basis for a discussion during the visit. During the assignment, we will typically use a number of instruments. Depending on the type of assignment, these may include:
- Desk study and documentary analysis.
- Context analysis - based on documentation and key informants who can help to identify and describe the challenges faced by stakeholders at national and local level.
- Target group assessment: formal and open-ended interviews with programme beneficiary families.
- Self-assessment - assessment of programme achievements by partners.
- Stakeholder assessment - the opinion of other parties involved.
- Expert knowledge - from other national or international consultants or researchers.
Network
We are a small professional company which networks with affiliated consultants and have contacts to local consultants on all three continents. You can find our associates here.
Approximately 10 additional consultants are hired for specific assignments each year. A number of these enjoy the status of “affiliate consultants” to HN Consultants. In practice, this means that the company engages formally and informally with a number of other companies and individual consultants. In some cases, HN Consultants has subcontracted other companies and institutions, such as NIRAS (Denmark), ESA Consultores (Honduras), Nordic Consulting Group (Denmark) and the Danish Association of Municipalities (KL). In other cases, HN Consultants has been hired by other companies (e.g. COWI in Denmark and HERA in Belgium).
When relevant, HN Consultants receives inputs from the following experts: Staffan Lindberg (expert on governance issues in Africa and particularly Ghana) and Ole Frank Nielsen (health and HIV/AIDS specialist).