McKinsey consulting project from RFP to delivery
Tl;dr: The most documents from a McKinsey management consulting engagement you will find. This starts from the RFP, the status updates, to the final DRAFT deliverables.
Interested in management consulting, specifically those done by McKinsey? Well, for obvious reasons McKinsey doesn’t want their information shared. So you don’t often get to see their presentations.
The “McKinsey report”
What is the McKinsey report?
Well, you know people are pissed in the community when people wonder what is “the McKinsey report”?
It’s a $660,000 city-ordered audit of Boston Public Schools by the consultant group McKinsey & Company. The Mayor’s office requested an eight-week review (in collaboration with the district) in 2014 to explore “potential options to improve student achievement, lower district costs and drive operational efficiency,
How these documents were released
Short version… a group of nosy parents requested the McKinsey documents under the freedom of information act.
The report was completed in spring 2015, but a summary version wasn’t released until December 2015. Members of the parent group Quality Education for Every Student, also known as “QUEST,” filed a Freedom of Information Act request in order to gain access to the full report, which the Mayor’s office did not release. Because of their request, the report was released in its entirety on April 27.
They explain this in a Facebook post:
QUEST finally received documents we’d requested in December regarding the McKinsey Report.
Quality Education for Every Student (QUEST), a grassroots organization of Boston Public School parents, questioned the legitimacy of a city-commissioned audit of Boston Public Schools by McKinsey and Company and asked Mayor Walsh and school officials to ensure that no policy decisions are made based on McKinsey’s flawed analysis. As Patricia Kinsella, a parent of two BPS students said, “The McKinsey report is wrong both in its numbers and its values. It treats students as commodities and schools as real estate investments. As a parent I find this appraisal, which cost a huge amount of money at a time when our school budgets are being cut and which uses misleading data to undercut a real planning process, immoral.”
The report, which the city ordered and for which Boston Public Schools paid $660,000, concludes that BPS has 93,000 seats for 54,000 students and recommends the closure of 30-50 district schools. Though the McKinsey report was completed in April 2015, the public was not able to read the full document until April 27 of this year, after the city was ordered to comply with a public records request initiated by parents last December. In addition to problems with the report’s content, therefore, QUEST expressed deep concern that the results of a facilities planning review led by an expensive outside consultant were hidden for a full year and that it took the city four months to comply with a public records request.
So what exactly did the report say?
The draft of the audit, which is dated March 5, 2015 and spans 220 pages, includes a number of cost-saving measures. One of the most contentious is the suggestion that the district consolidate 30 to 50 of its 125 schools. Doing so, the report said, would save the district an initial $120 million to $200 million, and between $50 million and $85 million each year. It would also allow the district to build one “state-of-the-art” high school, and nine “state-of-the-art” lower schools.
Well, my view is people are just numbers when someone else is paying for it, and if you hire McKinsey they’re literally going to do number things.
What else was in the report?
It estimated that the district has a capacity of about 93,000 seats, but that only about 54,000 are filled. (The district said it educates more than 56,000 students). But, by the report’s own admission, that 93,000 figure was calculated “without student-teacher ratio limits.” In the methodology section of the report, the authors said “Rooms were counted as ‘A’ or ‘B’ rooms by the facilities team. ‘A’ rooms could hold 21-30 students depending on the school, and ‘B’ rooms could hold 12 students.” Using those figures, the report concluded that each school had an average of 715 seats, which was multiplied by 130 to get the final determination of 92,950 seats.
The report goes on to suggest that if the district operated with the student-teacher ratio of comparable school districts—meaning more students per teacher—”they would carry ~1,300 fewer teachers, at a savings of $90-110 million.”
What about spending per student?
The report says Boston spends “above average” on each student, with a rate of $17,859 per student in 2012-13. But then, in a side item on a slide, says “when cost of living adjustments are made to the national peer set, Boston’s per pupil spending declines to $12,472 below the peer average of $13,109.”
It also notes that notes that the district has a higher percentage—19.5 percent—of special education students than other districts in the state and across the country. The district could save $5 million for every drop in a percentage point of special education students, according to the report.
The report also recommended increasing the minimum distance between a students homes and their bus stops from the current 0.16 mile to 0.25 mile. This could save $6 to $19 million each year.
Want to see more management consulting presentations?
Want to see a list of all the presentations I’ve been able to pull together? Check out the Management consulting presentation collection here.
A whole lot of presentations by McKinsey
Why did I blow a few hours making this bloody collection for you? Well, you rarely get to see this many documents from a firm like McKinsey. For those who have an interest in entering management consulting, understanding how the process is run, just how many updates are shipped to keep stakeholders involved, this should be insightful to you.
- We start with a RFP from BPS
- We have the response to BFP from McKinsey
- Early insights (McKinsey always share initial thoughts asap)
- Many updates which they call “check-ins”
- End deliverables which are always DRAFTs (likely so McKinsey doesn’t get stuck down with an obligation)
I’ve tried to order the documents, but it wasn’t obvious. The point is to learn about how the documents are made, so whatever 😉
I’ve only pulled out the documents pertaining to McKinsey. If you want to see all the documents you can see the folder from QUEST here.
| Date | Document | Size |
| Jun-2015 | Nine Documents Re:boston Compact SPR 15 862 | 52 Pages |
| Mar-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Draft | 30 Slides |
| Mar-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Steering Committee Working Draft Full | 221 Slides |
| Mar-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Steering Committee Working | 220 Slides |
| Feb-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 7 | 9 Slides |
| Apr-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Draft With Comments | 10 Pages |
| Feb-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 5 | 11 Slides |
| Jan-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 4.pdf | 10 Slides |
| Jan-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 2 | 11 Slides |
| Jan-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 1 | 10 Slides |
| Apr-2015 | McKinsey BPS Operational Review | 30 Slides |
| Apr-2015 | McKinsey Operational Review BPS Operational Audit | 29 Slides |
| Apr-2015 | Summary of BPS Operational Review 2 | 13 Pages |
| Apr-2015 | Summary of BPS Operational Review | 10 Pages |
| Apr-2015 | McKinsey Operational Review BPS Summary of Audit | 13 Pages |
| Apr-2015 | Preliminary Draft Early Insights On BPS | 6 Pages |
| Nov-2014 | McKinsey BPS Proposed Workplan | 1 Slides |
| Nov-2014 | McKinsey Response to RFP – VOLUME #1 Technical Proposal | 73 Pages |
| Oct-2014 | BPS RFP for audit | 41 Pages |
Nine Documents Re:boston Compact SPR 15 862
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Draft
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Steering Committee Working Draft
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Steering Committee Working
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 7
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Draft With Comments
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 5
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 4
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 2
McKinsey BPS Operational Review Check-In week 1
McKinsey BPS Operational Review
McKinsey Operational Review BPS Operational Audit
Summary of BPS Operational Review 2
Summary of BPS Operational Review
McKinsey Operational Review BPS Summary of Audit
Preliminary Draft Early Insights On BPS
McKinsey BPS Proposed Workplan
McKinsey Response to RFP – VOLUME #1 Technical Proposal
BPS RFP for audit
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