18th May 2006, 02:49 PM
Posted by Roywhiting:
You have to remember what consultants are for. The key purpose as I see it is to help clients to navigate the maze of regulatory requirements so that they can achieve their aims. Everything else that any environmental consultant (including archaeologists) flows from that one basic purpose.
We can tell a developer what would represent good practice and what would be advisable to do. However, we would have to make clear any difference between that and what the have to do. If we tell a developer that they have to do something that is not required by law and has not been requested by any regulatory authority (=local authority) and is not likely to be asked for, then we are behaving dishonestly and possibly illegally. It would be similar to a garage telling you that your car engine was knackered and needs replacing when all you needed was an oil change.
As an example, we recently had three cases where we had prepared the client for a requirement to do trial trenching based on a 5% sample. The curator in each case responded to our consultation with a request for a much smaller sample (one of them was less than 1%). What are we to do? tell the client that the curator is wrong and they should spend several times as much money just to please us?
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
Quote:quote:It seems like consultants are in the most powerful positions in these situations as they can insist on best practice in the absence of a local DC archaeologist.There is some truth in that - consultants can promote good practice, and we certainly try to do so in our organisation. However, relying on the consultants for this purpose is a dangerous road to go down, and there is a limit to what a consultant can do.
You have to remember what consultants are for. The key purpose as I see it is to help clients to navigate the maze of regulatory requirements so that they can achieve their aims. Everything else that any environmental consultant (including archaeologists) flows from that one basic purpose.
We can tell a developer what would represent good practice and what would be advisable to do. However, we would have to make clear any difference between that and what the have to do. If we tell a developer that they have to do something that is not required by law and has not been requested by any regulatory authority (=local authority) and is not likely to be asked for, then we are behaving dishonestly and possibly illegally. It would be similar to a garage telling you that your car engine was knackered and needs replacing when all you needed was an oil change.
As an example, we recently had three cases where we had prepared the client for a requirement to do trial trenching based on a 5% sample. The curator in each case responded to our consultation with a request for a much smaller sample (one of them was less than 1%). What are we to do? tell the client that the curator is wrong and they should spend several times as much money just to please us?
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished