As much as possible, managers and departments shall use the expertise of college employees before hiring a consultant or anyone on a personal services contract to do specialized work.

In general, departments may consider retaining a consultant only under the following conditions:

1. There is no college employee who has the necessary expertise; and
2. It is not practical to train current employees to do the work because
   1. the need is one-time or
   2. the need is urgent and there is not enough time to train employees or
   3. the cost of training or the time needed to train employees is prohibitive.

If there are employees who have the necessary skill, a consultant may be retained if those skilled employees are already working at capacity and cannot be reassigned to do the work needed.