Pat Donvito's writings Consulting
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Personal Pat Donvito Nick Ruggieri art Professional Resume Recent projects Education Teaching Course descriptions Systems engineering	Work Something should be said about my work. I had to think about that because of a recent incident. It seems that every time a new acquaintance is made, one of the first questions asked is: “What do you do?” Seems like everybody does it. People even make fun of the persistence of that question. Maybe it is because we are such a work oriented country. No doubt about it, in the good old UsofA, that’s how we get our first significant piece of information about one another. When someone reveals their occupation, a lot of derivative information comes tumbling out without even asking. You can figure out about how much education they have had. You can pretty well guess their income level. Then what kind of a neighborhood they probably live in. And you can go even farther. You can gage the importance of their work, and the status of their position, That was, of course. The first question I asked my neighbor at a economics luncheon meeting recently. After introducing ourselves, I automatically asked, “What do you do?” He said that he worked for the Office of Management and Budget, which I knew to be a powerful arm of the White House. Very little gets done in the federal government without it getting through OMB. I continued by asking, “What do you do at OMB?” Turned out that he was in charge of environmental regulation. I immediately reacted to that because as a consultant I too was often involved in environmental research for regulatory purposes, and he asked what environmental areas I had been involved in, I described projects in noise control, air pollution, water quality, and then one area that really caught his attention, which was motor fuel lead abatement. He wanted to know more about what I did on lead abatement. I answered that I was one of a team of two consultants that worked on the analysis of the impact of lead abatement in gasoline. I did the economics and an engineer colleague did the technology. The OMB man showed a lot of interest in that work. He said that the analysis underlying the regulation for lead abatement was the showpiece of their office. After that regulation went into effect, he related that the epidemiologists had calculated that hundreds of children lives had been saved by the reduction in lead poisoning. When you do research of the type I did, you seldom get to learn of the final outcome or the final results of your work. And in this instance, almost serendipitously, I did find out what ultimate effect my work had had. And of course I was pleased. I remembered that the oil companies had to be battled, and that the economics was crucial because much relied on the cost estimates. The oil companies said formulating and marketing unleaded gasoline would cost too much, but our study indicated that taking the lead out of gasoline would only cost one tenth of what the oil companies were claiming. Our work prevailed, and furthermore it turned out to be correct. That was an example of my work, I selected one of the better examples (of course). Most of my working life was spent as an independent economic consultant. It was a hard way to make a living, but I liked it. Also, I found that many people envied me with my work, which sometimes puzzled me. But being independent has a certain aura about it. Many people came to me and asked how they too could become an independent consultant, or free lance. I would neither discourage them nor encourage them. It was a way of life, which perhaps you could tolerate or perhaps not. The work was not regular, and of course neither was the pay, and that could be disconcerting. I had three kids and a homemaker wife, so I needed reliable income. People would ask me how I had made a success of such an uncertain way of work. My answer was that I made a success of it because I had to. I had a family and I needed the work and the pay. Sometimes some one would come to me and say that they wanted to be an independent consultant, however, they really did not need the money. They just wanted to do something interesting. Right away I knew that their chances for success were mighty slim. In order to put out the necessary effort to secure and carry out projects, you had to be driven by need. You had to be hungry. People did know the right questions to ask. How do you get the contracts? How do you get the projects? Over my twenty five years of consulting I did have an impressive list of clients. Among my clients were the Rand Corp., where I got my start. I did consulting work for Rand for about fifteen years. Among the others were IBM, General Electric, Science Applications Inc., an incredibly successful technology company, The Mitre Corp., Resource Management Corp., The Urban Institute, a major source of work for me, and some others that by this time I have forgotten. These were the private firms. Much of my projects were with government agencies. Agencies include in my work were The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, The Department of Transportation, Office of Economic Opportunity, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Bureau of Standards and perhaps I have missed a few. With such an impressive list of clients, one might assume that I did not have had any trouble keeping busy. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I had to work hard at getting work all the time. None of those clients felt any obligation to keep me occupied. In fact, the general rule seemed to be, get the consultant’s work done as quickly as possible and release him. Calling myself a consultant could be somewhat misleading. The word, consultant is abused freely in Washington. One would think from the media accounts that being a consultant usually meant being paid off for some political debt. I worked primarily like a contractor. Although, it did happen at times, only a minor part of my work involved being called into a firm or agency to give my opinion on some issue. In Washington, opinions are in super abundance. As recognized in economics, when the supply is great, the value is low. So I did not depend on my giving opinions for a living. I was involved in actually doing work in economic research. There was also the question of how I was able to function in so many diverse areas, which is evident from my list of clients. The answer was that my specialty was cost-benefit analysis. I was taught its methods well at the Rand Corp. Where it was invented in its modern form. Cost-benefit analysis can be usefully employed in virtually any issue. It is a powerful tool, which immediately can provide structure to the problem at hand.

Pat Donvito's writings

Consulting

Work

Something should be said about my work. I had to think about that because of a recent incident.

It seems that every time a new acquaintance is made, one of the first questions asked is: “What do you do?”

Seems like everybody does it. People even make fun of the persistence of that question. Maybe it is because we are such a work oriented country. No doubt about it, in the good old UsofA, that’s how we get our first significant piece of information about one another. When someone reveals their occupation, a lot of derivative information comes tumbling out without even asking. You can figure out about how much education they have had. You can pretty well guess their income level. Then what kind of a neighborhood they probably live in. And you can go even farther. You can gage the importance of their work, and the status of their position,

That was, of course. The first question I asked my neighbor at a economics luncheon meeting recently. After introducing ourselves, I automatically asked, “What do you do?” He said that he worked for the Office of Management and Budget, which I knew to be a powerful arm of the White House. Very little gets done in the federal government without it getting through OMB.

I continued by asking, “What do you do at OMB?” Turned out that he was in charge of environmental regulation. I immediately reacted to that because as a consultant I too was often involved in environmental research for regulatory purposes, and he asked what environmental areas I had been involved in, I described projects in noise control, air pollution, water quality, and then one area that really caught his attention, which was motor fuel lead abatement. He wanted to know more about what I did on lead abatement. I answered that I was one of a team of two consultants that worked on the analysis of the impact of lead abatement in gasoline. I did the economics and an engineer colleague did the technology.

The OMB man showed a lot of interest in that work. He said that the analysis underlying the regulation for lead abatement was the showpiece of their office. After that regulation went into effect, he related that the epidemiologists had calculated that hundreds of children lives had been saved by the reduction in lead poisoning.

When you do research of the type I did, you seldom get to learn of the final outcome or the final results of your work. And in this instance, almost serendipitously, I did find out what ultimate effect my work had had. And of course I was pleased. I remembered that the oil companies had to be battled, and that the economics was crucial because much relied on the cost estimates. The oil companies said formulating and marketing unleaded gasoline would cost too much, but our study indicated that taking the lead out of gasoline would only cost one tenth of what the oil companies were claiming. Our work prevailed, and furthermore it turned out to be correct.

That was an example of my work, I selected one of the better examples (of course).

Most of my working life was spent as an independent economic consultant. It was a hard way to make a living, but I liked it.

Also, I found that many people envied me with my work, which sometimes puzzled me. But being independent has a certain aura about it. Many people came to me and asked how they too could become an independent consultant, or free lance. I would neither discourage them nor encourage them. It was a way of life, which perhaps you could tolerate or perhaps not. The work was not regular, and of course neither was the pay, and that could be disconcerting. I had three kids and a homemaker wife, so I needed reliable income. People would ask me how I had made a success of such an uncertain way of work. My answer was that I made a success of it because I had to. I had a family and I needed the work and the pay. Sometimes some one would come to me and say that they wanted to be an independent consultant, however, they really did not need the money. They just wanted to do something interesting. Right away I knew that their chances for success were mighty slim. In order to put out the necessary effort to secure and carry out projects, you had to be driven by need. You had to be hungry.

People did know the right questions to ask. How do you get the contracts? How do you get the projects? Over my twenty five years of consulting I did have an impressive list of clients. Among my clients were the Rand Corp., where I got my start. I did consulting work for Rand for about fifteen years. Among the others were IBM, General Electric, Science Applications Inc., an incredibly successful technology company, The Mitre Corp., Resource Management Corp., The Urban Institute, a major source of work for me, and some others that by this time I have forgotten. These were the private firms. Much of my projects were with government agencies.

Agencies include in my work were The Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, The Department of Transportation, Office of Economic Opportunity, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Bureau of Standards and perhaps I have missed a few.

With such an impressive list of clients, one might assume that I did not have had any trouble keeping busy. Unfortunately, that was not the case. I had to work hard at getting work all the time. None of those clients felt any obligation to keep me occupied. In fact, the general rule seemed to be, get the consultant’s work done as quickly as possible and release him.

Calling myself a consultant could be somewhat misleading. The word, consultant is abused freely in Washington. One would think from the media accounts that being a consultant usually meant being paid off for some political debt. I worked primarily like a contractor. Although, it did happen at times, only a minor part of my work involved being called into a firm or agency to give my opinion on some issue. In Washington, opinions are in super abundance. As recognized in economics, when the supply is great, the value is low. So I did not depend on my giving opinions for a living. I was involved in actually doing work in economic research.

There was also the question of how I was able to function in so many diverse areas, which is evident from my list of clients. The answer was that my specialty was cost-benefit analysis. I was taught its methods well at the Rand Corp. Where it was invented in its modern form. Cost-benefit analysis can be usefully employed in virtually any issue. It is a powerful tool, which immediately can provide structure to the problem at hand.

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