Judging

Judging process

The MCA Awards are assessed by an independent judging panel, with experience and expertise spanning a full spectrum of business areas. Firms and individuals are judged on the value they created. Our two-stage judging process ensures that only the best can win.

Shortlisting
Shortlisting is currently underway - each entry is checked to ensure compliance with our entry criteria. Then, for each of the 19 award categories, entries are marked against our judging criteria and up to four entries are shortlisted.

Entry coordinators will be informed in the week of 9 January 2012 if their entries have been shortlisted. The full shortlist will be externally published in the week of 16 January 2012.

Panel interviews
Each shortlisted entry is scored again by the panel judges against the judging criteria. Shortlisted firms and candidates are asked to attend a 25 minute interview on 26, 27, 30 January or 2, 3 February 2012.

We can now confirm the dates for each category to help with your planning, should your entry be shortlisted:

Thursday 26 January

• Change Management Consultant of the Year
• HR Consultant of the Year
• IT Consultant of the Year
• Marketing Consultant of the Year
• Performance Improvement Consultant of the Year
• Strategy Consultant of the Year

Friday 27 January

• Operational Performance in the Public Sector
• Innovation

Monday 30 January

• Customer Engagement
• International
• Outsourcing
• Strategy
• Technology

Thursday 2 February

• Change Management in the Public Sector
• Finance and Risk Management
• Operational Performance in the Private Sector
• People

Friday 3 February

• Change Management in the Private Sector
• Environment

For project awards, one consultant representative must be available for interview in person. The MCA also encourages the attendance of a client representative for the interview, either in person or by phone.

For individual awards the shortlisted consultant must attend the interview in person.

The interviews allow applicants to communicate their entries directly to the judges, who in turn are able to ask questions they have after reading the written submissions, allowing them to more deeply assess who should win.

Winners are announced at the MCA Awards Dinner, held in Central London on 19 April 2012. The dinner is a black tie event held in a top London venue, with over 500 guests attending. Tickets go on sale in January 2012.