You are right! However, the poor performance on the client's internal team is making their job harder, so I understand the reason behind the question being posted

@asdf so charge for the extra time as they make the job harder...

But maybe the amount charged for the job is not up to be decided by the poster

@asdf Though it is more likely that the amount charged is within his power to change than the running of the client's company.

"The client is well aware of the situation" - this is the key factor. If you've made them aware, all that's left to do is send the bill. If they weren't aware, then make them aware... and then send the bill.

I don' think this answer is in the best interest of the contractor, at least not if you are interested in working with company in the future. If you cannot get the job done because people in the company obstruct your work, you cannot just redirect the blame. Parts of it will stick.

@asdf got the point. Their deficiencies deeply affect our work. We are on body rental type of contract. Our company sell us to the client for a FIXED price for a FIXED amount on time. I have no power on the amount my company charged the client (nor I want to have it!)

@UKMonkey The only thing the client did was simply to bypass its internal team.Decision that causes a big part of the problem

@ElitotConfused Even if you are on a fixed price contract, you still have teh same answer. Make your higher ups aware of the problem. It is between your company's managers and the client company. Your company may pull people to work on other projects/clients. You cannot make the other team do anything.

@ElitotConfused if all they'd done was fire their internal team, you'd STILL have the same answer. You highlight that a problem has come up and that your costs have changed - you then allow the people who are in charge of the contracts to establish if there's been a breach; and then if there hasn't, you send the bill and inform the client that there's a delay. Honestly, the answer really is this simple... and the simple solutions are in general the best!

I understand the answer, however it seems to ignore the fact that contractors care about their effectiveness: it's how they're able to get more contracts.

"You have been paid, right? There should not be any reason for you to go above the boundary, it's not your company". This kind of attitude is the reason that the consulting industry is driven by paychecks and not delivering actual value to the client.

@ElitotConfused Even in a fixed price contact your management will likely be raising change orders with the client due to the delays. Honestly this is how they pay the bills.

@LaurieBamber The client is actively interfering with the contractors delivering them value. Clients also shouldn't pay for contractors that don't deliver value. Both of those problems are on the client to resolve, so I don't see the issue.

@TKK money.....

@LaurieBamber Not necessarily true. It's the reason permanent people can think it's find to play office politics, because they don't see a cost to wasting other people's time. It's only when a contractor says "person X has delayed me, therefore project Y is going to cost $Z more" that anyone sees the cost of office politics to the company in unproductive time.

"Not my circus, not my monkeys." When project success is impossible, you should measure your success via "am I being the best consultant I could be?". If the client's happy with your work, and motivated to renew the contract, then you're doing fine.

With this solution, keeping hold of the high-skilled consultants may get difficult. Hopefully the consulting company will make some amends, or the people will simply switch to a less annoying workplace.