27th April 2006, 03:31 PM
Good afternoon Troll.
I have grave doubts that competitive tendering is th ebest, or even an appropriate, method for carrying out development related archaeology, so if that's what you are driving at, we are as one on that subject. However, I fear we are stuck with it, so plan B is to make it work as best we can.
Malpractice, shoddy work, short-cutting, trashing archaeology, poor H&S and so on is indeed reprehensible and unprofessional and probably not accordance with the contract and planning conditions for the given situation. It seems to me that the villains in the piece are the contractors, and it is they upon whom pressure should be brought to bear.
Policing, by which I presume you mean regular inspection of sites, offices and textual material, is just not practical. I think it was 1man who worked up some simple stats to show how many inspectors would be needed, and that was to make just on evisit per site if memory serves. Policing in effect should be provided by curators (but we've been here many times before) in a similar way to a building inspector but they far too under-resourced (Northants springs to mind here...). Consultants have a role here as 1man has made clear. Certainly staff of all levels if they regard themselves as professional should by definition not carry out unprofessional tasks or procedures. I understand the difficulties, but all for one and one for all...
One approach to this (frankly) unprofessionalism is to improve the cut-throat price-cutting hand to mouth existence which this forum tends to portray. The best way to do this IMHO is to introduce sensible tendering and pricing procedures (that I have droned on about before) so that units will be paid for what they do, and thus not be tempted to not do it. There would then be no reason not to things properly, or not to provide proper hutting, loos, H&S etc - in fact every incentive to do so. Just like a building site really... see also the last TA.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
I have grave doubts that competitive tendering is th ebest, or even an appropriate, method for carrying out development related archaeology, so if that's what you are driving at, we are as one on that subject. However, I fear we are stuck with it, so plan B is to make it work as best we can.
Malpractice, shoddy work, short-cutting, trashing archaeology, poor H&S and so on is indeed reprehensible and unprofessional and probably not accordance with the contract and planning conditions for the given situation. It seems to me that the villains in the piece are the contractors, and it is they upon whom pressure should be brought to bear.
Policing, by which I presume you mean regular inspection of sites, offices and textual material, is just not practical. I think it was 1man who worked up some simple stats to show how many inspectors would be needed, and that was to make just on evisit per site if memory serves. Policing in effect should be provided by curators (but we've been here many times before) in a similar way to a building inspector but they far too under-resourced (Northants springs to mind here...). Consultants have a role here as 1man has made clear. Certainly staff of all levels if they regard themselves as professional should by definition not carry out unprofessional tasks or procedures. I understand the difficulties, but all for one and one for all...
One approach to this (frankly) unprofessionalism is to improve the cut-throat price-cutting hand to mouth existence which this forum tends to portray. The best way to do this IMHO is to introduce sensible tendering and pricing procedures (that I have droned on about before) so that units will be paid for what they do, and thus not be tempted to not do it. There would then be no reason not to things properly, or not to provide proper hutting, loos, H&S etc - in fact every incentive to do so. Just like a building site really... see also the last TA.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.