A UK project planning consultant typically costs between £400 and £900 a day on a time-and-materials basis, or from around £1,000 for a short diagnostic engagement up to £50,000–£150,000+ for ongoing programme controls support on a complex, multi-year project. The right figure for you depends on seniority, the tools required (particularly Primavera P6 or Oracle Primavera Cloud), and — most of all — how complicated your schedule actually is.
Before the numbers, one clarification worth making, because it trips up a lot of searches.
Is this the "planning consultant" you're looking for?
If you landed here hoping to price up help with a planning application or planning permission, you want a town planning consultant, not us. That's a different profession entirely — advising on land use, listed buildings and local authority applications.
This guide is about project planning and scheduling consultants: the people who build, maintain and interrogate your Primavera P6, Oracle Primavera Cloud or MS Project programme, and the wider project controls discipline that sits around it (cost control, earned value management, schedule risk analysis). If that's you, read on.
What do project planning consultants actually charge in 2026?
There are two useful, publicly checkable reference points, rather than any single "market rate."
Contractor day rates. IT Jobs Watch's analysis of live UK contract postings for "Project Planner" (six months to 22 July 2026) puts the median day rate at £500, with a 25th–75th percentile range of £413–£550, and a top decile above £595. That's a reasonable proxy for a solo scheduler brought in on a time-and-materials basis.
Framework rate cards. Public sector G-Cloud listings, which suppliers publish openly, show a much wider band once seniority and specialism are factored in. One project controls consultancy's current G-Cloud card runs from roughly £385 to £1,210 a day depending on grade — from a junior planner up to a principal consultant or programme controls lead. That spread is a good sanity check for private-sector quotes too: anyone quoting meaningfully above £1,200 a day for an individual consultant should be able to explain why.
Before you compare quotes, it's worth knowing what state your own schedule is in — a well-built programme is quicker (and cheaper) for any consultant to pick up than one that's drifted. Our Free P6 Check gives you that read in a few minutes, at no cost.
Roughly, by experience level:
- Planner / scheduler (early career): £350–£500/day — schedule updates, progress statusing, basic reporting.
- Senior planner / scheduler: £500–£750/day — schedule build, baselining, DCMA-style health checks, stakeholder-facing reporting.
- Project controls manager / lead: £700–£1,000+/day — EVM, cost-schedule integration, change control governance across a programme.
- Schedule risk analyst (QSRA): £700–£1,000+/day — Monte Carlo simulation, confidence-level forecasting, usually a shorter, defined engagement rather than a continuous placement.
Day rate, fixed price, or retainer — which costs less?
Day rate isn't always the cheapest model, and it's rarely the right question. Three structures are common:
Time-and-materials (day rate). Best for ongoing, hard-to-scope work — an embedded planner supporting a live programme. Cost is transparent but open-ended.
Fixed price. Best for a defined deliverable: build and baseline a new programme, run a one-off DCMA 14-point health check, produce a QSRA report ahead of a board decision. You know the total cost upfront; the consultancy carries the estimating risk. Planned's own fixed-price engagements start from around £1,000 for a focused diagnostic, scaling to £50,000–£150,000+ for complex, multi-year programme controls support — the wide range reflects schedule size and duration far more than seniority.
Retainer. Best where you need guaranteed capacity — a fractional project controls function — without carrying a full-time headcount. Typically priced as a discounted day rate against a minimum committed number of days a month.
What actually drives the price?
Rate cards only tell half the story. In our experience, five things move the quote more than job title does:
1. Schedule complexity. Activity count, WBS depth, number of interfaces and calendars. A 500-activity subcontractor programme and a 15,000-activity nuclear decommissioning schedule are not the same job, even if both are "Primavera P6."
2. Contract requirements. NEC3/4 contracts, for instance, require an accepted programme submitted and updated to a defined format and frequency — that recurring obligation is itself a cost driver, separate from the underlying planning work.
3. Standards and assurance expected. A DCMA 14-point assessment, an APM-aligned maturity review, or formal earned value reporting all add scope (and value) beyond simply moving activity bars around.
4. Urgency and continuity. Parachuting a consultant in to rescue a schedule mid-crisis costs more than planning the engagement three months out.
5. IR35 status. For UK contract engagements, whether the role sits inside or outside IR35 changes the effective cost even at an identical quoted day rate — an inside-IR35 engagement carries employer's National Insurance and payroll costs on top of the rate, which some clients forget to factor into a like-for-like comparison between a contractor and a consultancy's fixed price.
Public frameworks are a useful reality check
If a quote looks unusually high or low, it's worth cross-checking against a live public framework rather than guessing. G-Cloud rate cards are published openly by suppliers bidding for public sector work, and — while public sector pricing isn't a perfect proxy for private industry — the bands are a legitimate, checkable anchor. Anything wildly outside £350–£1,200/day for an individual consultant deserves a question about why.
In-house planner vs consultancy: the quick version
A permanent in-house planner is usually cheaper per day worked but carries fixed cost year-round, recruitment risk, and a single point of failure if they're on leave — or leave the business. A consultancy costs more per day but flexes with demand and brings exposure across many programmes, which matters most when you need DCMA-standard rigour, QSRA, or EVM capability you don't use often enough to justify a permanent hire. We'll cover this trade-off properly in a dedicated comparison; for most organisations the honest answer is "both, at different points in the project lifecycle."
How to get a quote you can actually compare
Before you ask three consultancies for a number, get clear on:
- How many activities, calendars and resources are actually in (or planned for) the schedule.
- Which standard you need to meet — DCMA 14-point, an APM competency framework, a specific NEC clause, or your own PMO governance.
- Whether you need a person, a deliverable, or ongoing capacity.
- What "done" looks like, so a fixed-price quote is actually comparable across bidders.
A vague brief gets a vague — usually inflated — quote. A specific one gets a number you can hold a supplier to.
It's also worth asking directly whether the quote is inside or outside IR35, and whether it's a day rate or a fixed price against the deliverable above — the two are not directly comparable without that context, and a supplier who can't answer either question quickly is worth a second look.
Get a straight answer on your own numbers
Rate cards and benchmarks are a starting point, not a quote. The honest cost for your project depends on the schedule in front of you — its size, its standard, and what you actually need done to it.
For a proper scoping conversation covering project planning and scheduling support, ongoing project controls, or a one-off schedule risk analysis, book a free consultation and we'll give you a clear, scoped number — not just a day rate.