15th September 2006, 08:04 PM
When APPAG issued their report there was some discussion about this on their bulletin board and on the britarch discussion board.
At the time I wrote:
"A levy system to cover the cost of archaeological work has many
advantages but is fundamentally flawed - who would pay for the cost
of the time it takes to do the excavation? The knock on costs of
excavation to the developer are 2.5 times the archaeology costs. It
is developers' preference in AAIs to pay for excavation for this
reason.
The franchise system and training.
Inevitably there are going to be winner and losers. Will the losers
be compensated for the removal of their right to practice their
trade?
What happens to uncompleted projects when the franchise changes? What
happens to the half completed reports? What would happen to all the
local expertise when a franchise is lost?
Let's think this through, after the first round we have a return to
the nice cosy unit system of the eighties. Inevitably the smaller
player would cease to exist and so would the specialist organisations
and individuals. Let's say we have one unit per county.
The training, the wage increases, the community archaeology and
putting the reports on the net all have to be paid for, so let's say
for the sake of argument this doubles the current cost of archaeology
to say UKP150 million, including a profit margin of 20% for the
franchise holders. Each county organisation would have an average
turnover of UKP3 million generating an average profit of UKP600k.
The franchise holder will presumably be able to say for each project
how long it will take and how much it will cost. Thus a guaranteed no
risk profit which they set. Nice work if you can get it.
The franchise holder could be given a set budget for the year. If
there was a surge in development in that area what would happen to
those sites which the budgets could not cover the excavation of?
Seems to me we need more detail"
I also posted about what it mean for the individual and the section of my conference paper dealing with franchises comes from these postings.
Peter
Peter Wardle
At the time I wrote:
"A levy system to cover the cost of archaeological work has many
advantages but is fundamentally flawed - who would pay for the cost
of the time it takes to do the excavation? The knock on costs of
excavation to the developer are 2.5 times the archaeology costs. It
is developers' preference in AAIs to pay for excavation for this
reason.
The franchise system and training.
Inevitably there are going to be winner and losers. Will the losers
be compensated for the removal of their right to practice their
trade?
What happens to uncompleted projects when the franchise changes? What
happens to the half completed reports? What would happen to all the
local expertise when a franchise is lost?
Let's think this through, after the first round we have a return to
the nice cosy unit system of the eighties. Inevitably the smaller
player would cease to exist and so would the specialist organisations
and individuals. Let's say we have one unit per county.
The training, the wage increases, the community archaeology and
putting the reports on the net all have to be paid for, so let's say
for the sake of argument this doubles the current cost of archaeology
to say UKP150 million, including a profit margin of 20% for the
franchise holders. Each county organisation would have an average
turnover of UKP3 million generating an average profit of UKP600k.
The franchise holder will presumably be able to say for each project
how long it will take and how much it will cost. Thus a guaranteed no
risk profit which they set. Nice work if you can get it.
The franchise holder could be given a set budget for the year. If
there was a surge in development in that area what would happen to
those sites which the budgets could not cover the excavation of?
Seems to me we need more detail"
I also posted about what it mean for the individual and the section of my conference paper dealing with franchises comes from these postings.
Peter
Peter Wardle