5 years time.....

[Devillish Advocate]

This issue of long hours, overtime rates (or not) traveling time and expenses on some larger jobs, and who's fault it is, is a complex issue.!

Don't really see how. Of course the client wants you to work for as close to nothing as he can legally make you. It's the role of the archaeology company to insist on appropriate recompense for their services. If they bend over and agree to put in a low tender with no overtime, expenses or whatever then they are, as RedEarth says, undercutting companies that do want to do right by their staff.

Even if the client refuses to pay such things, you as the archaeology company just increase your flat daily rate to cover all your expenses and overtime, and put in your tender on that basis.

Of course it won't work, but only because you'll be undercut by someone who doesn't value their profession or their staff.

[gumbo]

Also, with it being very much an employers market , to get a job in academia at the moment you have to have a lot of decent published research (not grey literature) in order to get shortlisted for interviews, even for temporary post-doctoral or 1 yr lecturing positions. This has to be done in your own time and does not offer any kind of career/life structure whilst you are in the process of doing it. Basically, unless you are very lucky, to get to Advocates 'halcyon' career stage you will have to sweat blood.

[Devillish Advocate]

As opposed to sweating blood to find yourself exactly where you were 15 years previously, but with arthritis, in field archaeology?

[gumbo]

Ha ha ha! Well put. So essentially the difference is arthritis or no arthritis...

[Jack]

Don't really see how. Of course the client wants you to work for as close to nothing as he can legally make you. It's the role of the archaeology company to insist on appropriate recompense for their services. If they bend over and agree to put in a low tender with no overtime, expenses or whatever then they are, as RedEarth says, undercutting companies that do want to do right by their staff.

Even if the client refuses to pay such things, you as the archaeology company just increase your flat daily rate to cover all your expenses and overtime, and put in your tender on that basis.

Of course it won't work, but only because you'll be undercut by someone who doesn't value their profession or their staff.

Complex in terms of who is causing the undercutting...........in the case in point.....the company had got the tender (theoretically), but the client then threatened to put it out to tender again unless they agreed to the new conditions.

On a different recent tender specification I saw, the breakdown of the decision criteria was 80% cost 20% on a demonstration of sufficient understanding of the archaeology.

One of our managers said that he always asks for feedback on why we didn't win a tender. It is always cost.

To survive an archaeological company has to win tenders.

[Sith]

One of our managers said that he always asks for feedback on why we didn't win a tender. It is always cost.

Just to add to the confusion, we have recommended that clients reject tenders that are obviously too low for the contractor to be able to adequately complete the work.

[the invisible man]

Good. Pity more consultants (i.e. all of them) don't. But do your clients always take your advice?

[Devillish Advocate]

To survive an archaeological company has to win tenders.

I'm not trying to be a complete cock here, but surely reducing your tender to in order to ensure it gets accepted is exactly what undercutting is?

It is also exactly how the competitive tendering system is supposed to work, so in that respect there is no problem. The problem, of course, is that competitive tendering relies on the client caring about the quality of the result as well as the cost. As we are in the somewhat unique position of being employed by people that neither want nor understand our service, they will naturally opt for the cheapest, rather than the most cost effective, solution. As such, constantly reducing our rates just because that is what the client wants leads to poor standards of archaeology and poor archaeologists, in every sense.

That said one of our regular clients has a policy of rejecting out of hand both the most expensive and the cheapest tender they receive, for all sub-contracted services not just archaeology. I presume that is the only reason we continue to get work with them when we generally refuse to cut our own throats to win tenders.

[P Prentice]

what these posts fail to address is that contracting managers are expected to win new contracts to keep themselves and their senior colleagues in work at whatever cost. it wont matter if diggers and other bottom end staff have to travel hundreds of miles a day for buttons and then get sacked off when they are inconvenient so long as the company keeps going. it wont matter if the tender is inadequate if the mounties dont have the neccessary to monitor and check so long as the company keeps going.

and worst of all - diggers are not going to get any support in this current climate from the people they are clamouring to work for who are too interested in sitting pretty

[Marcus Brody]

what these posts fail to address is that contracting managers are expected to win new contracts to keep themselves and their senior colleagues in work at whatever cost.

But if they don't win the contracts, the diggers will be out of a job anyway, and will be moaning about those lazy fekkers back in the office being incapable of finding enough new sites to keep the staff employed. I don't want to see anyone being exploited, I don't think diggers should have to travel hundreds of miles a day for buttons, but if the firm doesn't win new jobs, the diggers will be out of work anyway.