Franchises

[Cautionary Tale]

I do accept Dr Pete and others opinion that what is good for archaeology may not be good for archaeologists etc etc but I’m not convinced that in medium or long term franchising would be good for either. Initially, yes, I agree with Simon Johnson my dislike for the system may have had something to do with the prospect of winning any of the franchises. Now I am not in the position of producing tendering for work but am in the position of requesting them. If this system was put into place then this aspect of the consultants job would be reduced (ie no need to manage the tendering process), but there would still be a need to actually manage the work. My other concern is really comparisons with other systems which are franchised (ie train operators). The incumbent in the franchise is invariably at an advantage and would obviously draw the skills to it over the period of the franchise. Who would honestly leave a holder of a franchise (and guaranteed pay) for the possibility of work with a company which may not start up? What would happen, for example, with a long excavation project (5 years ish) which crossed over the franchise change? Would the first company have to complete the work (with obviously reduced resources and manpower) or would the archive and work be passed on to the new franchise holder? As I say, this medium/long term issue does concern me but am open to debate on the points.

Desiderate le fritture con quello?

[beamo]

Also:

Who appoints the franchise holder ?
Who monitors the performance of the franchise holder ?

Perhaps we will end up with a national government body - Ofarc, or the Arch Regulator.

What rights of appeal do developers have if the franchise holder is seen / perceived to be performing poorly?

What if an employee of the franchise holder falls out with the management (hard to believe, but this can happen in archaeology) - the employee would need to relocate to a different region in order to continue in the profession - could be difficult to explain to the family why they are being uprooted.

Beamo

[1man1desk]

Before PPG 16 and competitive tendering, we had a system that effectively amounted to a series of county-based or region-based franchises. It may have been idealogically better, but it was infinitely worse for both the archaeology and archaeologists.

Developers only pay for archaeological work because they are told they have to by the planning authority. If they then have no choice in who will do the work, and have to pay whatever the franchise-holder chooses to charge, they are being treated very unfairly. In the modern world, I could see legal challenges going to Europe.

In competitive tendering, price is usually (though not always) the main determining factor for success. However, it is entirely possible to put quality barriers in place that prevent cowboy units from tendering in the first place. We sometimes do this through a 'pre-qualification' process. Wider adoption of quality standards, and stricter enforcement through this kind of process, can ensure that the winner in any tender is the cheapest unit that can show that it will do a quality job and has a quality track record.

Incidentally, our pre-qualification process covers pay, welfare facilities and safety issues as well as archaeological ones.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[beamo]

It is possible to use the IFA RAO scheme as a form of pre-qualification, as it addresses many of the issues raised by 1m1d. Of course, like many other quality control schemes, it is open to abuse by unscrupulous contractors (no names mentioned).

Ducking for cover already.


Beamo

[drpeterwardle]

When APPAG issued their report there was some discussion about this on their bulletin board and on the britarch discussion board.

At the time I wrote:

"A levy system to cover the cost of archaeological work has many
advantages but is fundamentally flawed - who would pay for the cost
of the time it takes to do the excavation? The knock on costs of
excavation to the developer are 2.5 times the archaeology costs. It
is developers' preference in AAIs to pay for excavation for this
reason.

The franchise system and training.
Inevitably there are going to be winner and losers. Will the losers
be compensated for the removal of their right to practice their
trade?

What happens to uncompleted projects when the franchise changes? What
happens to the half completed reports? What would happen to all the
local expertise when a franchise is lost?

Let's think this through, after the first round we have a return to
the nice cosy unit system of the eighties. Inevitably the smaller
player would cease to exist and so would the specialist organisations
and individuals. Let's say we have one unit per county.

The training, the wage increases, the community archaeology and
putting the reports on the net all have to be paid for, so let's say
for the sake of argument this doubles the current cost of archaeology
to say UKP150 million, including a profit margin of 20% for the
franchise holders. Each county organisation would have an average
turnover of UKP3 million generating an average profit of UKP600k.

The franchise holder will presumably be able to say for each project
how long it will take and how much it will cost. Thus a guaranteed no
risk profit which they set. Nice work if you can get it.

The franchise holder could be given a set budget for the year. If
there was a surge in development in that area what would happen to
those sites which the budgets could not cover the excavation of?

Seems to me we need more detail"

I also posted about what it mean for the individual and the section of my conference paper dealing with franchises comes from these postings.

Peter

Peter Wardle

[historic building]

I cannot see a government which has tried to introduce competition into the NHS going into the archaeological market. On any level, in capitalist, market economic terms, the archaeological industry works very well - prices are low and there is competition in all areas of the country. There are some large units and they in no way are dominant in the market in all areas of the country.

I am not saying, in any way, that this is a good thing. The 'success' of the market in archaeology has kept prices and wages down. All I can see is that introducing frachises would have exactly the same result as it has in the railways - worse service and higher costs and higher subsidies from the government for the worse companies - not to mention virgin trains. My idea is slightly different regional specialists should be located, and employed by county museum services. The museum services are the organisations which curate archaeological archives. The specialists based in that region, or county, should be able to undertake all specialist work in that county and advise planning archaeologists on the production of brief and even possibly aid in the monitoring of fieldwork. Basically working in an analogous way to the regional science advisors for EH but also undertaking specialists reports.

I think this would have the advantage for increasing the involvement of specialists in fieldwork and in ensuring a level of consistency in reporting within the county or region.