The Consultant Has Been Here Three Years

There's a consultant in your organisation who's been here longer than half your permanent staff.

They have a desk. They have a security badge. They're in the org chart, sort of. They're on the meeting invites for everything important. People CC them on emails out of habit. New employees assume they work here.

They were brought in for a project. That project ended, or evolved, or spawned other projects. There was always a reason to extend. Another phase. A transition period. Knowledge transfer that never quite completed. A new initiative that needed their expertise.

Three years later, they're still here.

Their day rate hasn't changed. Well, it's gone up, actually—annual increases, just like salaries, except without the salary cap. They're billing more per year than your senior developers earn. Multiply that by three years and the number gets uncomfortable.

But nobody talks about it. The consultant has become institutional furniture. Questioning their presence would be awkward. They know things. They have relationships. They're woven into how work gets done.

At what point do we admit this isn't a project? It's a dependency.

How It Starts

Nobody plans for a three-year consultant engagement. It happens through a series of reasonable extensions.

Month 1-3: The Original Project

The consultant arrives to solve a specific problem. An implementation. A transformation. A rescue of something failing. They're expensive, but it's bounded—three months, maybe six. The business case is clear.

Month 4-6: The Extension

The project takes longer than expected. Scope expanded. Complications arose. The consultant knows the context now, and ramping up someone new would slow things down. Better to extend. Another three months.

Month 7-12: The Adjacent Work

The original project is wrapping up, but there's adjacent work that makes sense for them to tackle. They already understand the systems. They have the relationships. Starting fresh with someone else would be inefficient. The extension is reframed as a new engagement.

Year 2: The Indispensable Expert

By now, the consultant knows more about certain systems than anyone internal. Documentation is thin. Knowledge transfer was always "coming" but never prioritised. The consultant has become the expert. Letting them go would be risky.

Year 3: The New Normal

The consultant is just... here. Their presence isn't questioned. Budget for them is built into the baseline. New projects assume their involvement. They're not staff, but they're not temporary either. They exist in a permanent limbo, billing daily.

Each step made sense at the time. None of them were bad decisions in isolation. But the cumulative effect is an organisation paying consultant rates for what has become a permanent role—without the commitment, loyalty, or cost structure of an actual employee.

The Maths Nobody Does

Let's do the maths that nobody wants to do.

A senior consultant bills somewhere between $1,500 and $2,500 per day, depending on the firm and specialisation. Let's say $2,000—not the cheapest, not the most expensive.

$2,000 × 220 working days = $440,000 per year

Over three years: $1.32 million

For that money, you could have:

Hired two senior permanent employees for three years

Hired one senior employee plus funded their training, tools, and a junior to develop

Built a small internal team that would still exist and still be developing capability

The consultant, after three years, walks away. The knowledge walks away with them. The capability was rented, not built. The organisation is no more able to do this work internally than it was on day one.

Actually, it's less able. Because for three years, nobody internal was doing this work. Nobody was learning. The muscle atrophied while the consultant handled everything.

$1.32 million spent. Zero capability built. That's the maths.

What Consultants Actually Do

I want to be fair to consultants. Many are excellent at what they do. They bring expertise, outside perspective, surge capacity, and specialised skills. There are legitimate reasons to use them.

Genuine expertise you don't have and don't need permanently. A niche technology migration. A regulatory compliance project. Something that happens once and requires knowledge you'll never use again.

Surge capacity for bounded initiatives. A major implementation with a clear end date. A transformation programme with a defined scope. Extra hands when you need them, gone when you don't.

Outside perspective. Someone who can see things insiders can't. Challenge assumptions. Bring patterns from other organisations. Hold up a mirror.

Political cover. Sometimes you need an external voice to say what internal people can't. The consultant can deliver hard truths that would be career-limiting for an employee.

These are valid uses. They're bounded, intentional, and don't create long-term dependency.

But that's not what the three-year consultant is doing. The three-year consultant is doing ongoing work that could be done by employees. They've become a permanent fixture filling a permanent need. The "consulting" framing has become a fiction.

Why It Persists

If the maths is so bad, why does this pattern persist? Why don't organisations just hire the consultant, or hire someone else to do the work, or build the capability internally?

Hiring is hard. Headcount is constrained. Budgets are scrutinised. Requisitions require approval. But consulting spend often comes from a different budget line—project costs, not salary costs. It's easier to extend a contractor than to hire an employee, even when hiring is cheaper.

The consultant is already here. They know the systems. They have the context. They have the relationships. Bringing someone new—employee or different consultant—would require ramp-up time. The path of least resistance is extension.

Nobody owns the problem. The hiring manager doesn't control the consulting budget. The person controlling the consulting budget doesn't manage the work. Finance sees the invoices but not the alternatives. Nobody has both the visibility and the authority to make a different choice.

Knowledge transfer is always "later." There's always pressure to deliver now, document later. The consultant is always about to transfer knowledge, but there's always something more urgent. Three years pass and the transfer never happens.

The consultant is good at staying. This isn't cynical—it's rational. The consultant's livelihood depends on continued engagement. They're not going to push hard for their own replacement. They'll find new problems to solve, new phases to propose, new reasons to extend.

Admitting the pattern would be embarrassing. Someone approved each extension. Someone signed each SOW. Acknowledging that a three-year consultant engagement was a mistake implicates people who made decisions. Easier to keep extending than to confront the history.

The Hidden Costs

The $1.32 million is just the visible cost. The hidden costs are worse.

Capability atrophy. Every day the consultant does the work is a day nobody internal learns to do it. The organisation becomes less capable over time, not more. The consultant's presence actively prevents capability development.

Knowledge concentration risk. Critical knowledge sits in someone who doesn't work for you. Who could leave at any time. Who has no contractual obligation to stay. Who might get a better engagement elsewhere next month.

Cultural damage. Permanent employees see the consultant. They see someone doing interesting work, billing high rates, with no organisational obligations. They draw conclusions. Some become cynical. Some become consultants themselves.

Decision distortion. When the consultant is already here and already expert, every new problem gets routed to them. Build versus buy becomes consultant versus nothing. The range of options narrows to whatever the consultant can provide.

Vendor capture by another name. Everyone worries about vendor lock-in. But consultant lock-in is the same dynamic with a human face. You're dependent on an external party for critical capability. You can't easily switch. You have no leverage.

The Conversation Nobody Has

Here's the conversation that should happen but rarely does:

"This consultant has been here three years. Why?"

Not accusatory. Genuinely curious. What's the ongoing work? Why can't it be done internally? What would it take to bring this capability in-house?

"What happens if they leave tomorrow?"

Not a threat. A risk assessment. If the consultant got a better offer, what would break? What do they know that nobody else knows? What would we be unable to do?

"What have we learnt from them?"

After three years and $1.32 million, what capability has transferred? What can we do now that we couldn't do before? If the answer is "nothing," that's important information.

"What would it cost to build this capability internally?"

Not to replace the consultant with a cheaper consultant, but to actually develop the capability. Hire people. Train them. Give them time to learn. What would that cost, and how does it compare to three more years of consulting fees?

"Is this actually a permanent role?"

If we've had a consultant doing this work for three years, it's not a project. It's a function. Should it be a permanent position? Should it be a team? What's the right structure for ongoing work?

These conversations are uncomfortable. They implicate past decisions. They challenge current arrangements. They require someone to act.

But without them, the pattern continues. Year four. Year five. Millions more spent. Capability still not built.

The Exit Is Harder Than You Think

Let's say you decide to end the dependency. You want to bring the capability in-house. How hard is that?

Harder than it should be. Because the consultant has been here so long, extracting their knowledge is like extracting an employee's knowledge. Except they have less incentive to help. Their engagement is ending. Their motivation to document thoroughly is limited.

The knowledge is tacit. Three years of context, relationships, workarounds, and "how things actually work" lives in the consultant's head. Much of it was never written down. Transferring it requires time and attention—exactly what's in short supply during a transition.

The internal people aren't ready. Nobody's been developing while the consultant handled everything. You need to hire, or reassign, or train. That takes months. There's a gap between when the consultant leaves and when internal capability is ready.

The consultant may not want to help. Their incentive is continued engagement, not successful transition. Even with good intentions, they may not prioritise knowledge transfer. And some consultants actively cultivate dependency—it's good for business.

The systems are built around them. Processes assume the consultant's involvement. Documentation references their work. Relationships were built through them. Unwinding three years of integration takes more than a two-week handover.

This is why the dependency persists. Getting out is painful enough that staying feels easier. Each year, the exit gets harder and the dependency deepens.

What To Do Instead

If you're staring at a three-year consultant, here are your options:

Convert to employee. If they're good and willing, hire them. You'll pay less, get more commitment, and start building real capability. Yes, hiring is hard. It's still better than indefinite consulting fees.

Structured transition. Define a real transition plan with milestones and accountability. The consultant's final engagement is explicitly about transferring capability, not doing more work. Make the transition their deliverable.

Parallel development. Hire or assign internal people to work alongside the consultant. Not just shadowing—actually doing the work together. Build capability while the consultant is still available to support.

Clean break. Sometimes the best option is to end the engagement and figure it out. Yes, there will be pain. Yes, things will break. But the organisation will be forced to develop capability. The burning platform creates urgency that gradual transitions never do.

Accept and budget accordingly. If you genuinely need this consultant indefinitely, stop pretending it's temporary. Budget for it properly. Manage it like the permanent cost it is. And acknowledge the risk you're carrying.

What you shouldn't do is continue the drift. Another extension. Another year. Another set of invoices. Another year of capability not built.

The Question to Ask

Next time a consultant extension hits your desk, ask one question:

"What capability will we have when this engagement ends that we don't have today?"

If the answer is "the project will be done," that's fine—that's what consultants are for.

If the answer is "we'll need to extend again," you're not buying a project. You're renting a capability. And renting is always more expensive than owning in the long run.

The consultant who's been here three years isn't a failure of the consultant. They're probably good at their job—that's why they've stayed.

They're a symptom of an organisation that has forgotten how to build capability. That finds it easier to rent than to own. That has let the consulting budget become a substitute for the hard work of developing people and skills.

Three years is a long time. It's long enough to have hired someone and made them expert. Long enough to have built a team. Long enough to have developed real, permanent, owned capability.

Instead, you have invoices.

The consultant is still here. What are you going to do about it?