28th January 2005, 11:21 AM
Interesting story Digger. I think I know what epsode you're talking about. A unit in the Midlands put in a ridiculously low tender for a project and submitted a crap report, which was rejected by the local planning officer. Said resulting mess and non-discharge of the archaeological planning condition delayed the construction of the new development, costing millions to the developer. I hope the curator's meeting will come up with something productive to handicap the kind of crap tendering that plagues this profession. In the final analysis though, the kind of disruption that is caused to developers (and in this case it seems a real mess) will backfire on the unit concerned, because many developers will not touch them with a barge pole in the future. Unfortunately, collateral damage from this sort of scenario includes the image of archaeology and archaeologists being damaged. The development industry will can tar us all with the same brush, which undermines us all.