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4th August 2011, 04:32 PM
Out of interest, what post title would this post lead to were progression possible? Project Manager perhaps? And just what projects would somebody who only had experience of preparing DBAs be suitable to manage, hypothetically?
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4th August 2011, 05:41 PM
I think job title's in Archaeology are meaningless at the moment. To me (as someone who graduated in the early 2000s) they seem to be an amalgamation of job titles that existed in the construction industry and county councils in the late 1980s and both those sectors seem to have moved on since then...
Incidentally as far as I can tell Project Officer means an Officer who works on a Project. At my local council a Project Officer is more junior than a Project Supervisor. However looking on various council job websites it seems entirely dependent on the Council/Department...which is probably why it doesn't matter. Any prospective employer should be looking at the work you did/do and the level of responsibility you had/have rather than your job title...
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4th August 2011, 06:54 PM
Where on a UK passport is the box to write your profession in? Have my passport in front of me right now and can't find it. Was there ever a box on the passport that said 'profession'?
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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4th August 2011, 07:53 PM
vulpes Wrote:Out of interest, what post title would this post lead to were progression possible? Project Manager perhaps? And just what projects would somebody who only had experience of preparing DBAs be suitable to manage, hypothetically?
Curator, perhaps.
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4th August 2011, 07:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 4th August 2011, 07:55 PM by Dinosaur.)
gonetopot Wrote:...Writing DBAs is IMHO the office level of being a site assistant, and I mean no level of disrespect to the work they do but having done it myself its not that taxing....
Probably explains some of the half-baked/bl**dy awful DBAs I've had to work from on a few projects that we've taken over further down the line then!
Junior/inexperienced staff should in no way be permitted anywhere near DBAs, they're the lynch-pin of any prospective archaeological project and poorly researched DBAs are the cause of many a lost-without-record former archaeological site. There's been a spate of jobs recently around here wher we've been expected to do mitigation based on DBAs from another organisation which have consisted of nothing more than HER/NMR printouts without it passing through the authour's mind that maybe some of the sites were a touch larger than the gridpoint given on the HER, and that possibly looking at afew APs etc might have been a good idea.... Has been causing us a lot of bother having to effectively re-do the work from scratch 
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4th August 2011, 08:03 PM
(This post was last modified: 4th August 2011, 08:05 PM by Dinosaur.)
Jack Wrote:Sorry, not got any spare at the moment.
I'd disagree that DBA's are easy simple or should be written by site assistants............someone must be writing very poor DBA's somewhere.
In most respects a DBA is the most important part of the process in commercial archaeology, it is the report that considers the likelyhood of archaeological remains to be impacted by the development, and now, includes an assessment of the visual impact of the development on Heritage assets in the surrounds.
A good DBA includes a statement of the potential impacts and provides a strategy for their mitigation.
To accurately assess the impact you need to understand the regional research frameworks, resource assessments but also need a working knowledge of the region for all those troublesome sites that don't appear on the HER. You need to be able to interpret earthworks, aerial photographs, geophysical surveys, fieldwalking data and to know when these don't provide a good indication of the presence of unrecorded archaeology.
Furthermore, updated project designs and research designs are starting to creep into DBA's.
Hardly the thing you'd expect a site assistant to have the right experience and skills to undertake (not that site assistants can't do it.........just they should be paid the appropriate amount for the work).
BUT, after seeing some of the DBA's produced by some clients - just basic lists from the HER, I'm not surprised.
Shame on anyone encouraging this erosion of standards.}
Sorry Jack, been playing 5-page catch-up so hadn't got to your post, we seem to be thinking the same, could be why we both get paid more than that to write them, and are then at a pay-grade to follow up with all phases of the project through to peer-reviewed publication...which is surely a project officer's role, to deliver a project from inception (DBA) to completion (publication) while being sufficiently experienced and competent to follow all the twists and turns along the way....think its all in the job title really.... 
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4th August 2011, 11:26 PM
d'you know for once Dino, I actually agree with you. Wholeheartedly. :face-approve:
Dr Scrote (nice name by the way, are you a real Doctor?), I thought it was a fair question given the context. As far as I know the company in question doesn't offer that particular title though. Try again! Perhaps with your 4th post you will come up with something useful, or possibly another dig at me. 4th time lucky eh?
[INDENT]Shiny assed county mounty, office lurker, coffee junkie and facebook scanner[/INDENT]
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4th August 2011, 11:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 4th August 2011, 11:45 PM by vulpes.)
Oh, and Noddy, the 2 nearby Council units to me both place PO above Supervisor - is that not the norm? It's certainly reflected in BAJRs grade descriptions. Y'know, the ones where a PO is at Grade 5, and above a supervisor.
Quote:in this case i was satisfied that the post (if not the post title) fitted the grade just.
The key word there is 'just'.
A job is a job. Especially at this moment in time.
A pay rise is not the same as promotion. Promotion = more responsibility and a pay rise.
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4th August 2011, 11:49 PM
In my experience (15+ years and as many companies) terms like project manager vs project officer vs supervisor etc were fairly clear cut (at least, if not exclusively, in terms of an often ridiculous enforced Artificial Hierarchy!)
This company knows wots wot, and is relying on 'fresh' intake of people (wot know no better) to get away with this.
BAJR has no reason not to carry the Ad, and that is perfectly proper and well
, but i think the community should probably chastise what is very clearly a re-grading/down-grading of a generally understood Grade/Position....this is not the way to go (shame on you)
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5th August 2011, 12:08 AM
Yeah, strange days indeed. I also agree with you (for once!) oh Gnomey one.
It does lead me onto a personal gripe of mine with this 'factory' style approach to archaeology epitomised by these posts. In my view there should be no need for 'post-excavation' POs or 'DBA' POs as these two tasks should just be carried out by properly rounded POs whose time and responsibilities are divided between office and site (and HER, library, record office etc). In my experience such an approach (which is not incompatible with commercial archaeology) leads to better archaeologists and a better end product - as the best person to assess a site is the person who is about to excavate / trial trench it. Similarly the best person to write up a site is the person who has just spent, days, weeks or months excavating it. Not, in both cases some poor sucker who rarely gets to see daylight. Call me a crank, if you like (many do), but that for me is an approach which ticks all the boxes and also makes for happy (or at least happier) archaeologists. It's certainly something to aspire to. And not unknown even today.
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