The Management Consultancies Association has announced its finalists for the 2020 edition of its annual awards ceremony. A total of 32 firms have been short-listed for the 12 project-orientated prizes, as well as a gong for Best New Consultancy.

Each year, the MCA Awards is hosted by the UK consulting industry’s representative body to recognise the nation’s best consulting firms, projects and consultants. After a record number of entries were submitted for the 2020 edition, the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) has announced the firms to have made the final short-list for its top prizes, which will be handed out on Thursday April 23.

The Awards span 22 different categories, of which 13 laud the contribution of top firms in the UK’s £11 billion industry. As is often the case, the Big Four is set to dominate proceedings, with a collective of 25 award-nods between them for projects in 2019. PwC leads the pack with nine nominations, closely followed by EY with seven, Deloitte with six, and KPMG with three.

The latter two members of the quartet were conspicuous in their absence in last year’s nominations, so the numerous nominations going to Deloitte and KPMG represents something of a bounce back.

While the world’s largest professional services firms look set for a particularly strong performance at the ceremony, however, as was the case in 2019, the short-list is a long way off of replicating the Big Four dominance which has been seen in previous incarnations of the MCA Awards. Indeed, when considering project nominations alone, another 28 firms are represented by the MCA’s short-list.

Notable examples include BAE Systems, whose Applied Intelligence business was listed for four prizes, as was newcomer Arca Blanca – including one for Best New Consultancy. Arcadis, Arup, BearingPoint, Cognizant, IBM, NECS Consultancy, Procura Consulting and Vendigital all picked up multiple selections too.

Elsewhere, the changing landscape of modern business has seen the MCA add a number of new categories to proceedings. In the group categories, this sees the arrival of the Data Innovation Award (contested by Coeus Consulting – which last year was nominated for seven prizes – Arcadis, Carnall Farrar, Cognizant, Deloitte, EY, IBM, KPMG and PwC) and the Data and Innovation in the Private Sector (contested by Chaucer, Deloitte, EY, IBM, KPMG and PwC.

Tamzen Isacsson, Chief Executive of the MCA, said of the news, “The MCA Awards are a celebration of the outstanding work that management consultants are involved in across the public and private sector and highlight why the UK is proud to have one of the largest and most well-respected consulting sectors in the world. Of course, winning matters but more importantly these case studies put clients centre stage, on the record, championing the collaborative work being done with consultancies to deliver better business results and public services for society.”