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8th August 2013, 07:27 PM
Tool Wrote:Is it just me that finds it faintly disturbing how them things follow you around the site with their all-seeing eye? Or has the sun really got to me?
I guess I am not the only site surveyor who to break the monotony, gets the total station to wag its head at passers-by and give a beep.....especially effective if I am some distance away with the remote control. Even more effective with the spoken messages that the Trimble gives out in addition to beeps.... Its a long time though since I fooled a site worker that the machine was following them around....
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...
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9th August 2013, 06:26 AM
I was actually quite offended when it
didn't follow me the first time I used it yesterday, and had to get it do do its demonic head spinning thing to find me. I really must stop thinking of this kit being run by devilish imps, mustn't I...
Yeah yeah :face-topic:... sorry!
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9th August 2013, 08:51 AM
Oxbeast Wrote:only people with 10 years+ of experience should be allowed to dig it.
Was thinking more of those ads where 6 month is 'experienced' and 24 months gets you a PO salary - 24 months into my digging career I hadn't even seen a skelly (let alone one with shiny stuff), peat deposits, done any earthwork surveying etc - certainly wasn't qualified to be sent out to a strange site to deal with whatever was there.
We've got someone here that we're working up to PO hopefully, been digging for years but mostly industrial stuff so had never found any finds, was actually excited by a horseshoe off a spoil heap...so currently getting a crash course digging a chunk of strat Roman town with nice finds by the barrow-load...envy...envy...
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9th August 2013, 01:41 PM
Dinosaur Wrote:Was thinking more of those ads where 6 month is 'experienced' and 24 months gets you a PO salary - 24 months into my digging career I hadn't even seen a skelly (let alone one with shiny stuff), peat deposits, done any earthwork surveying etc - certainly wasn't qualified to be sent out to a strange site to deal with whatever was there.
We've got someone here that we're working up to PO hopefully, been digging for years but mostly industrial stuff so had never found any finds, was actually excited by a horseshoe off a spoil heap...so currently getting a crash course digging a chunk of strat Roman town with nice finds by the barrow-load...envy...envy...
Can I get this right, experienced = has dealt with treasure (not including industrial sites obvs.)? It surely kind of depends on where you work and what you typically do. Thanks for narrowing it down though.
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9th August 2013, 01:42 PM
CSCS cards and IfA membership are both equally pointless and only benefit those collecting the fees.......... neither have ever got me job (and yes I have both and quarry/pipeline cards too
)
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9th August 2013, 01:54 PM
RedEarth Wrote:Can I get this right, experienced = has dealt with treasure (not including industrial sites obvs.)? It surely kind of depends on where you work and what you typically do. Thanks for narrowing it down though.
Implying should have a sufficient range of experience to have a stab at anything that turns up (be it bog-body, wooden tramway under coal-board slag heap, Mesolithic flint scatter), firstly be able to
recognise significant archaeology (not always as obvious as some curators seem to think, and very often
not at all what was mentioned in the spec) and then be able to excavate and record it (and know what to do with the finds, what to sample etc) rather than standing around mystified and phoning back to the office 5 minutes in
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9th August 2013, 01:57 PM
monty Wrote:CSCS cards and IfA membership are both equally pointless and only benefit those collecting the fees.......... neither have ever got me job (and yes I have both and quarry/pipeline cards too )
We've had a few people turned away from jobs till they could produce their CSCS, plenty of construction firms work on no card, no site access
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9th August 2013, 05:17 PM
RedEarth Wrote:I assumed the CSCS card was just a scam to stop people who could speak English to a reasonable degree working in construction, since that's about the only reason you would fail the test, unless you were going out of your way to do so. Having said that, most of it is of no relevance to archaeologists anyway so perhaps we could be excused for not knowing all there is to know about fuel bunds, hot working, and toe boards on scaffolding.
The point of the CSCS card is not for safety per se, though I am happy to have learned more about white finger if I ever decide to become a professional drill hammerist? hammery? hammer?, the point is legal liability. Assuming something goes wrong on site they can use the CSCS card as a liability shield. They can say we were following the "professional" standards of the sector and thus can not be at fault when johnny cut his had off. If forces a lawyer to say that it is not just company X that is wrong but that every construction company and every construction project undertaken since the CSCS card was in effect are wrong. A very tall order for anyone.
Yes, it marginally improves safety but the real point is saving money on lawsuits.
And if you want to work for the construction industry, (cough) commercial archaeology, then you need one.
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9th August 2013, 05:59 PM
It's ironic that I lasted 20 odd years in the construction industry without a CSCS card, but couldn't go on site as a trainee archaeologist before passing the test... Funny old world!
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10th August 2013, 11:43 AM
Don't worry, they'll change the scheme in a year or two and we'll all be back to scratch anyway - whatever happened to the 'essential' GWINTO card for utilities jobs?...
