7th December 2005, 02:06 PM
Well I am glad I can cheer people up, but I was adopting a 'glass half full' approach to this topic. One of the many flies in this particular ointment is rightly pointed out by mercenary.
Indeed it does, and in my case we are fortunate in having built up good relations with key clients who provide most of our work*. To continue with my earlier analogy this is like moving to a new town and looking in the yellow pages for a garage to do your car servicing (hence why the RAO scheme and the IFA are important).
Mercenary also makes the very good point that
It does indeed, and this is a problem that we all have to face and deal across the country. As archaeologists we are almost unique in this! Unlike a builder, who can quantity survey down to the last brick, we are always guessing how to price archaeology. It might be a lovely deeply stratified site all they way back to the Iron Age, or all post-Roman deposits may have been removed by the 1830's factory. Unfortunately this is the nature of the Beast (not Beer Beast - he always needs a contingency at the end of the night for a kebab if I recall
) and it will always be with us. Archaeological pricing is rather like taking your car in to the garage because it needs a new wheelbearing and then finding that the track rod ends need doing as well. A good garage will warn you in advance of the likelihood of this - based on their own experience of that make/model/mileage etc - and of the probable cost.
I am in two minds about contingencies. I agree that they are good for precisely this sort of eventuality, but I have known them to be used rather unscrupulously as a tender-winning strategy - ie. put the 'headline figure' down but bung all the expensive stuff (which you know will be required) as a contingency.
Stopping this is down to curators (or consultants as 1man points out), who must ensure that the WSI matches the specification.
Again though I go back to my earlier point - I think the main objection that developers have is not so much cost but effect on timescale. Transparency in tendering is the key to explaining this.
*Ironically the best clients are not always the ones you would expect. We have worked for a major national heritage organisation (think oak leaves and green wellies) who were utterly clueless and prepared to machine away large chunks of 18th century archaeology. We have also worked for clients on behalf of well known ruthless supermarket operators who were very pleased to be able to deal with things properly, and delighted that we included provision for public archaeology.
Quote:quote:This assumes some kind of track record between contractor and client though. The problems seem to creep in however with developers who have no experience of dealing with archaeological conditions....[who]...automatically go for the cheapest tender, when they appear wholly ignorant of the reasons for the condition and the whole archaeological planning process
Indeed it does, and in my case we are fortunate in having built up good relations with key clients who provide most of our work*. To continue with my earlier analogy this is like moving to a new town and looking in the yellow pages for a garage to do your car servicing (hence why the RAO scheme and the IFA are important).
Mercenary also makes the very good point that
Quote:quote:...developers in [his] region are put off by contingencies in tenders and prefer a fixed price. It makes for very risky tendering
It does indeed, and this is a problem that we all have to face and deal across the country. As archaeologists we are almost unique in this! Unlike a builder, who can quantity survey down to the last brick, we are always guessing how to price archaeology. It might be a lovely deeply stratified site all they way back to the Iron Age, or all post-Roman deposits may have been removed by the 1830's factory. Unfortunately this is the nature of the Beast (not Beer Beast - he always needs a contingency at the end of the night for a kebab if I recall
) and it will always be with us. Archaeological pricing is rather like taking your car in to the garage because it needs a new wheelbearing and then finding that the track rod ends need doing as well. A good garage will warn you in advance of the likelihood of this - based on their own experience of that make/model/mileage etc - and of the probable cost.I am in two minds about contingencies. I agree that they are good for precisely this sort of eventuality, but I have known them to be used rather unscrupulously as a tender-winning strategy - ie. put the 'headline figure' down but bung all the expensive stuff (which you know will be required) as a contingency.
Stopping this is down to curators (or consultants as 1man points out), who must ensure that the WSI matches the specification.
Again though I go back to my earlier point - I think the main objection that developers have is not so much cost but effect on timescale. Transparency in tendering is the key to explaining this.
*Ironically the best clients are not always the ones you would expect. We have worked for a major national heritage organisation (think oak leaves and green wellies) who were utterly clueless and prepared to machine away large chunks of 18th century archaeology. We have also worked for clients on behalf of well known ruthless supermarket operators who were very pleased to be able to deal with things properly, and delighted that we included provision for public archaeology.