When is it better to hire a specialist or consultant instead of learning on the fly?

Question

Our agency recently had the opportunity to bid on a project where the client's in-house programmers were dead set on using Sharepoint. According to our communications they had already installed it, and wanted to port old PHP code piece-by-piece over to this platform. This was primarily to take advantage of the CMS capabilities, but I am quite certain there was no consideration for QA environments, developer customizations, source control, outside network access, etc. I started doing some research into it, and quickly realized that Sharepoint network configurations alone are an immense beast, and it would take me just as long to get a handle on it as we had to complete the whole project. I suggested to my boss we have a certified Sharepoint engineer configure and re-install it given our requirements. We would then handle any customizations. He was nervous about the idea of bringing in an outside vendor, and I can understand his hesitation. In these circumstances though, is it better to hire the specialist, or is it better to try and keep this knowledge in-house?

Answer 1

In the interest of time, I bring in a specialist / expert.

Answer 2

When it is time critical and there is a lot of risk around delivery of specific, well defined tasks.

Then put in place a plan that gives you adequate handover and lets you grow the skills in house to support this 'magic' the consultant has implemented for you.

Answer 3

I would not bid on the project. Consultants in general deservedly get a bad reputation by pretending to be experts at everything. If the stack is outside your firm's area of specialization, how good of a job can you do for the client, much less on time and on budget?