17th December 2010, 10:07 AM
GnomeKing Wrote:while commercial archaeology may have functioned over x-amount of years, the many topics discussed here in this forum are testament to the situation being far from desirable.
in particular the opportunities to create a progressive profession for the future have been almost entirely wasted, 9/10 directly because of competitive tendering.
(oh welcome BTW)
I don't think it's competative tendering in itself that is the problem, it's the varying nature of the organisations working within a framework of competative tendering that is. Organisation A might be an entirely independent commercial unit, B a council owned or affiliated company, C a company forming part of a 'charity', D a one man band working out of a back bedroom. Granted they might not all be tending for the same sort of jobs, but their varying running costs/overheads/organisation mean that they are quite hard to compare. As a result there is the potential for a lot of instability as the predictability of prices is all over the place - hence the difficulties in providing a 'progressive profession'.
In a sense everything you buy is a process of competative tendering - don't like the price of organic ethically sourced apples in the local wholefood shop? Go the supermarket. Don't want to pay top prices for new designer clothes? Go to Oxfam. The thing I think would make a difference is more easy comparison, and privatising council owned units is potentially one way of that happening, but it still needs a greater sense of ethical and honourable treatment by employers and managers and less taking advantage of convenient but potentially dodgy set-ups (curator and contractor in same building for example, but it sounds like in some cases that is as much of a hinderance as a help). How that is imposed is anyone's guess!