PA Consulting Group

1940–1950

PA was founded in 1943 as Personnel Administration by Ernest E. Butten, Tom H. Kirkham and Dr David Seymour. Britain's war effort created great demand for munitions and goods, which had to be produced by a relatively unskilled workforce. Butten and his colleagues formed Personnel Administration Limited to provide advice to industry as to how to improve the productivity of their workers.

PA was an offshoot of the pre-war Bedaux Company. Bedaux in turn had been developed based on the 'scientific management' theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor and Frank Gilbreth. Butten sought to take the mechanistic and task-orientated concepts of scientific management and add a human dimension to them. The chief idea, along the lines of Douglas McGregor's 'Theory Y', was that by involving the worker in the process of change and a suitable form of ownership, greater gains could be made both by the worker and the organisation.

PA's first assignment was to train volunteer women to assemble the tail gun section of Avro Lancaster bombers, as part of Britain's policy of bringing women into the factories to free up male workers for the armed forces.

1950–1970

By 1964, PA had dropped the name Personnel Administration and was known as simply PA Consulting Group. PA expanded and, by 1970, was the world’s largest management consulting firm by headcount. PA had also expanded geographically, mostly along the lines of the Commonwealth, with its operations in Australia providing about a third of the firm's revenue.

Butten retired from PA in 1970, having earlier sold his 100% shareholding in PA to the Butten Trust in 1958. The Trust was intended as a long-term guardian of PA's fortunes and an assurance that the company would be 'owned by the employees'.

1970–1992

During this period, PA found success in advising companies on potential applications of technology to business issues. This led to the building of technology centres in Melbourn, UK, and Princeton, USA.

Towards the end of the '80s, PA's management took the firm public. However, the company changed its strategy after 1992 to one of staff ownership.

1992–2015

Between 1991 and 1994, PA reduced its workforce by almost half. In 1992, Jon Moynihan was appointed as chief executive of PA.

Operations

The company is headquartered in London, England. It lists additional offices in the United Kingdom, USA, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The company's 2024 annual report reported £752.9m in revenue, and 3,895 employees. The company is owned by Jacobs Solutions.

PA works with organisations in seven industries: consumer and manufacturing; defence and security; energy and utilities; financial services; public services; healthcare and life sciences; and transport. The company's clients include major pharmaceutical companies such as Diageo, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever, major airports including Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, and energy companies including England's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, at its Sellafield nuclear site.

It is also a member of the United Nations Global Compact, a non-binding UN pact that encourages businesses to adopt sustainable practices, and the WePROTECT Global Alliance, a network of governments and companies aiming to tackle online child exploitation and abuse. PA produced the first two Global Threat Assessments for WePROTECT.

Technology and innovation

PA has a strong focus on technology dating back to its work with the earliest computers in the 1950s. Its Global Innovation and Technology Centre, designed by Richard Rogers and founded by Professor Gordon Edge in 1970, helped create the Cambridge Phenomenon where the city became a centre for the UK’s technological companies.

Controversy

In 2008, PA Consulting staff lost a memory stick containing thousands of prisoners' details, leading the Home Office to terminate the relevant contract and place their other contracts under review.

In 2014, UK Trade & Investment, a UK government body, entered into a three-year contract with PA Consulting for the provision of trade and investment specialists. An audit found PA “consistently made incorrect and misleading representations” and the head of the National Audit Office said, “both UKTI and PA have fallen well below the standards expected in managing public money”.

A subsequent House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report concluded, "We are not convinced that PA accepts the seriousness of its misrepresentations to UKTI or its failure to honour its duty of care to UKTI and the taxpayer."

In 2022, the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry questioned a former director of PA Consulting about the firm's advisory role in the decision to proceed with the project in 1999 despite known faults.

In 2023, PA Consulting threatened legal action against the news publication Schools Week to prevent disclosure of the day rates paid to PA Consulting staff on a government contract to test proposed reforms of Special Needs provision in schools.

In 2025, PA was awarded a £200,000 contract by the University of Edinburgh to cut costs in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. On their recommendation, 90 degree programmes were closed in 2026 despite academic staff and their trade union protesting at the academic consequences and lost fee income at negligible marginal cost.