CPCS leaders recognizing employees during its ‘DEEP Recognition’ awards ceremony.Provided
You might think Elizabeth Drake, a principal consultant at the Ottawa-based management consultancy CPCS, sounds incredibly distinguished, and she is. Drake completed her undergrad at Queen’s University, master’s in development management at the London School of Economics and has worked in at least 15 countries.
But the point is, that’s par for the course at CPCS. The firm consults on a wide variety of high-end projects around the world, mainly in the transport and power spheres, and notably in North America, Africa, the U.K., the Caribbean and Latin America. And its people are distinguished.
“Everybody has a minimum of a master’s, with very few exceptions,” says co-managing partner Marc-André Roy, himself an MBA. “Ten per cent of our team members have PhDs and, in many cases, multiple degrees. We have many colleagues from top-tier universities, like Cambridge, Princeton, MIT. So we attract people that are smart and passionate.”
Small wonder that Roy says one of the key reasons to work at CPCS is “the people.” And, he adds, the sector. “The work we do in infrastructure is fascinating,” he says. “For starters, it’s so tied into the economy, it’s so tied to how people live. And for a lot of our people, it offers the opportunity to work internationally. There is so much potential for impact, which is a big reason we attract such high-calibre colleagues.”
Drake is an economist who joined the firm on her return from London in 2007, and now oversees climate change advisory. In her earlier years, she worked in some 15 to 20 countries for CPCS, usually for short spells, on projects involving transport sector strategy, policy and much more.
Then she had her two boys, now 12 and 9, and stayed closer to home. Now one of her projects is advising on vehicle emissions reduction in the Lower Mainland for B.C.’s TransLink transit system and Metro Vancouver. “It’s super interesting, and I’m sure it will have an impact,” she says. She has also consulted on making marine shipping through the St. Lawrence Seaway more competitive as a transport option.
And she loves the environment at CPCS. “It’s a very flat organization, not hierarchical,” she says. “The vibe is really like, if you have something to say, say it. If you have questions or you want to contribute, there’s not a lot of bureaucracy. Which means, one, there are a lot of opportunities to learn from everybody in the company, regardless of your level, and two, it’s pretty quick in terms of decision-making.”
She notes, too, that the firm is employee-owned, “which creates more of a team dynamic. We’re kind of directing the ship together.”
Roy notes that the ship travels widely. CPCS has offices in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., India and Africa. “We work on projects that have a very specific beginning and end, and a lot of that work requires some travel to the place of the project for a week or two, sometimes longer,” he says. “I lived for a year in Nigeria as a project co-ordinator.”
With the advent of the pandemic, there was less travel, of course, but it has also meant that more faraway partners have learned to communicate virtually with CPCS offices. For those in the offices, the firm has a flexible two-day-a-week hybrid policy for working on site. In Ottawa, that often includes Thursday, which is pizza day. And last summer, the firm brought in all its people to head office for a week of planning, co-creating and team-building – “they came from just about every corner of the planet,” says Roy. Clearly, a very distinguished group.
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