"Bright, brash, overpaid, pain in the necks." This is how most client company employees regard consultants, according to Mr Terry Neill. As chairman of the board of Andersen Worldwide and global managing partner of Andersen Consulting, businesses with revenues in excess of $16 billion (€15.8 billion), Mr Neill can take the stick.

Thirty years into his career with Andersen Consulting, this native of Co Down, is still brimming with ideas of how to trim corporate fat. The key to his vitality: changing job positions every five years and developing knowledge.

Training and knowledge are central to the core philosophy of Anderson Consulting, says Mr Neill. The company set up the first corporate university almost 30 years ago in Chicago and is now preparing to launch a radical new strategy to boost skills competency and knowledge support. Mr Neill will be responsible for the implementation of this scheme which will involve an investment of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion.

"If you were getting on a flight and the pilot came on the blower and said he'd never flown before, you'd run a mile," says Mr Neill. "A $100 million loan which goes sour is equivalent to a plane crash for a company." For this reason Mr Neill proposes a new training strategy geared around simulations of business situations, done not in the classroom but on a PC.

This re-balancing of Andersen Consulting's training strategy will aim to boost technical expertise, he says.

"Nowadays the challenge is how do you create a team of people that can move at the sort of pace of responsiveness, required for a marketplace which is changing every two or three months," says Mr Neill.

Most of Andersen Consulting's work in the latter part of the 1990s was bound up with system changes required for company's to become Y2K complaint. But now the company is completely refocusing on the revolution in e-commerce activities, says Mr Neill.

"Speed is essential," says Mr Neill. "E-commerce is a huge change in the context we do business but some of the fundamental rules of business still apply, you have to make profit," he says. "We will see a significant shake out in this sector: just putting a dot.com after your name is no guarantee of success."

Andersen Consulting is positioning itself to take advantage of this e-revolution. This will involve three strands: business to consumer, business to business and the relatively new area of business to employee e-commerce.

The modern industrial base and the Republic's strong presence in the technology sector are well noted by Mr Neill, who still maintains a keen eye on Ireland's recent economic successes.

"Ireland is well positioned as long as we don't undermine it. When you have full employment, pressures on wage rates, pressures on skills, there's always the chance that the cost base gets out of kilter," he says. "The trick is to create a common ethos in society where there is a sense everyone is getting a fair share of the spoils."

The issue of foreign ownership of companies in the Republic is a concern worth considering, says Mr Neill. "Like other people in a senior position in a global company we have emotional interest and would bring ideas here that you wouldn't bring elsewhere.

"If the ownership of all the banks and telecoms moved outside the country there is a danger that when push came to shove some decisions could be taken that lay outside the interest of the country."

Mr Neill's strong connection with the Republic was formed during his time at university. He studied mathematics and physics at Trinity College Dublin in the late 1960s. Developing conceptual skills at college was undoubtedly an important driver of his success in business, says Mr Neill.

"I think these skills are very important in consulting work where you have to be able to take ambiguous combinations of issues and problems, break them down and learn how to deal with them."

However his favourite memories of life on College Green involve sports and the social life. "I played a lot of sport and the social skills and social capital I built up at university were of tremendous value to me."

Still a keen rugby and cricket follower he intends to be at Twickenham next week for the Ireland versus England game. However, his own sporting ambitions are now mostly played out on golf greens when he gets the chance.

However, being able to switch off is essential in the world of consulting where 14-hour days are commonplace. Opera has become Mr Neill's escape of choice. He tries to get to three good performances a year whether in New York, London or Paris. Puccini is one of his favourites.

"The trick is to find things that take you into a completely different emotional space and let it all wash over you," he says.

Mr Neill has not lost touch with his northern roots either. He went to school with First Minister, David Trimble, and still maintains occasional contact with him. He is currently chairman in Britain of Co-Operation Ireland and is a member of the Northern Irish Partnership, which both work to encourage economic development here. "There has been a huge change in the business environment in Northern Ireland since the peace process began and, fingers crossed, this will continue to benefit both north and south," he says.

But what prompted a science graduate to join Andersen Consulting in the first place?

"In the early 1970s the world discovered the graduate and there was a lot of choice around," says Mr Neill.

After spending two years at the London Business School studying for an MBA, by chance rather than design, Mr Neill ended up attending an Andersen presentation. "I heard about it from a vet and a couple of medical students," says Mr Neill, who admits the group were as much in search of a few free drinks as a profession at the time. But the people attending the presentation impressed him.

"My main impression was that they were a really engaging group of people who were enthused by what they were doing and the group included Germans, Americans and Irish. It really transcended national borders."

Thirty years later and Mr Neill is still enthused by the people he works with. "I work with fantastic people in Andersens and the client organisations we work with. One of the rewards is that with all the travelling, which I hate, I meet a lot of incredible people which keeps me focused and enthused."

His cites his mentor as Mr Frank Barrett, the first managing director of Andersen's in Dublin. "He has great personal integrity and created the initial context for Andersen's here in Dublin," says Mr Neill. "The constant common factor required in working with key clients is high personal integrity, they must have absolute trust in your intentions. Honesty and determination are central factors to this."

Perhaps not surprisingly for a consultant, human resources and human performance remain central to Mr Neill's economic vision of the future. "As we move further into the electronic economy people issues will become more important," he says. "There will be the beginnings of a practical body of knowledge in the whole area of brain science and working out exactly what motivates people, de-motivates people and how humans function."

This is highlighted through the prominent issue of mergers and acquisitions. Human beings are at the core of these processes, argues Mr Neill. "Few mergers have worked in terms of developing the benefits they were expecting to bring. The challenge has usually been cultural issues between the workforces and hardly any companies have put the effort into working their way through the people and the employment issues."

With Anderson Consulting investing between $1 billion and $1.5 billion in the whole concept of human performance - be assured Mr Neill will be hoping to put this right.