Project management consultant (PMC)

The PMC model rents an owner a project organisation. Where the owner's permanent team is small and the project is not, the PMC supplies the management layer: planning and controls, procurement and contracts administration, interface coordination between contractors, reporting, and often site supervision — acting in the owner's name, under the owner's authority, for a fee. On multi-contract megaprojects the PMC is frequently the only party that sees the whole board.

The model's tension is accountability without power. A PMC manages outcomes it does not contractually control — the contractors hold their contracts with the owner — and its liability is capped near its fee, a fraction of the costs its performance influences. The structure works when the owner delegates genuine authority and holds the PMC to genuine standards; it fails into two familiar shapes: the PMC as expensive postbox, processing paper between owner and contractors while decisions queue, or the PMC as shadow owner, exercising authority nobody formally granted until a dispute asks who decided.

The layering also has a price in overhead and in distance — every message between owner and contractor passing through a paid intermediary — which is the fee's honest competition.