The Consulting Reckoning: What the BOM Failure and AI-Generated Reports Are Really Telling Us
- Erin Clark
- Nov 27
- 4 min read
In the space of a few weeks, Australia watched two high-profile failures unfold:
The Bureau of Meteorology’s website collapsed during critical weather events.
A Deloitte report was revealed to be largely written by AI — and not even checked properly before delivery.
Individually, these stories are concerning. Together, they point to something deeper, structural, and long overdue:
Management consulting is facing a reckoning — and the cracks have been visible for a long time.
For years, public sector CIOs, asset managers, and project leaders have quietly absorbed the consequences: cost blowouts, delivery failures, unclear accountability, and change fatigue that never seems to subside. Now, these issues are finally making headlines and the pattern is impossible to ignore.
The Traditional Consulting Model Is Failing Modern ICT Projects
ICT projects in asset-heavy, public-facing organisations are getting more complex, not less. But the dominant consulting business model hasn’t meaningfully evolved since the 1990s.
At its core, the Big 4 structure is a volume game.
A pyramid — yes, let’s be honest, a pyramid scam — fuelled by overwork, margin stacking, and labour arbitrage. Outcomes come second to utilisation.
The results speak for themselves:
A $4 million engagement that somehow costs $100 million
AI-generated reports delivered without validation
Burnout, turnover, and — tragically — worse
A national weather service buckling under outdated delivery methodologies
These aren’t isolated incidents. They are symptoms of the same system.
AI Won’t Disrupt Media or Marketing First — It Will Disrupt Consulting
For years, consulting firms have justified large teams and long timelines by pointing to the need for manual analysis, document creation, and requirements definition.
AI has dismantled that justification almost overnight.
We no longer need 180-page reports. We no longer need analysts rewriting boilerplate. We no longer need layers of people summarising each other’s work.
At TEC Group, we’ve been preparing for this shift for some time — not by replacing thinking, but by automating the noise around it.
Our internal models accelerate the part of the project lifecycle that traditionally absorbs the most time and cost:
Needs → Requirements → User stories → Test cases (the V-model)
This compression frees up consultants to focus on what actually requires judgment:
Governance clarity
Systems alignment
Prioritisation
Organisational readiness
Portfolio-level decision-making
Real-world adoption
The work that cannot be automated — but is too often neglected.
But AI Isn’t the Real Disruption. The Business Model Is.
Even with the best tools, modern ICT delivery will fail if it’s delivered through a 30-year-old commercial model designed for:
high billable hours
high-priced junior labour
low transparency
“transformation theatre”
At TEC, we’ve been experimenting with alternative ways of working that break the consultant/contractor/fractional talent divide:
More flexibility
More transparency
More accountability
Smaller, sharper teams
Clearer ownership
Less theatre
More delivery
This is what asset-heavy, project-oriented organisations need: consulting that is aligned to outcomes, not utilisation targets.
But we also know we can’t fix an industry this entrenched on our own.
The Consulting Industry Needs a Collective Reimagining —
And Australia Is Ready
Consultants are not the most trusted or beloved group — we’re aware of the stereotypes!
But someone needs to start the uncomfortable conversation about what consulting should look like if organisations are to be genuinely future-ready.
That’s why we’re partnering with Business Women Australia to facilitate a national dialogue in 2026 about the future of consulting — particularly in the public sector, infrastructure, higher education, and asset-intensive environments.
We want to explore questions such as:
What parts of consulting deserve to be automated — and what absolutely shouldn’t be?
What does a sustainable consulting model look like for both clients and talent?
How should delivery methods change for increasingly complex ICT and asset management environments?
What accountability structures actually work?
How do we rebuild trust between consultants and clients?
This is not a forum for venting; it’s an exercise in design. Because we can’t build a better consulting model without the people who rely on it — and the people fed up with it.
And a Final Thought: Projects Fail When They Design for Tropes, Not Users
One of the more frustrating parts of the BOM coverage has been the oversimplified narrative around “farmers needing easy weather data.”
It’s a reminder of a deeper issue:
technology projects fail when they design for imagined personas rather than real users.
Modern farmers are among the most tech-capable operators in Australia:
They run multiple paid weather platforms
They manage IoT devices and on-farm analytics
They use DPIRD data
Many are university educated and highly data-driven
And as anyone in the Wheatbelt will tell you: No, farmers did not need last week’s rain. Rain during harvest is a disaster.
This matters because these same user-assumption failures show up in ERP replacements, asset management systems, safety reporting tools — everywhere.
Better consulting starts with better understanding of the people we design for.
Where TEC Is Headed Next
TEC Group exists because the old consulting model doesn’t work anymore.
We help public-sector and asset-heavy organisations:
reduce noise
increase clarity
build usable systems
define real roles and responsibilities
focus on decisions that matter
deliver projects that stand up in the real world
And we’re doubling down on that mission.
Over the next 12 months, we’ll be:
publishing our consulting model experiments
convening national conversations
partnering with organisations that want to build capability, not dependency
If you’d like to be part of the 2026 conversation — or if you have your own frustrations, insights, or ideas — we’d love to hear them.
This is a chance to redesign consulting from the ground up.
Let’s not waste it.
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