16th March 2011, 04:10 PM
I'm don't think that MoLA or anyone else are fair as such, why should they be? My question isn't specifically about MoLA though, its about the perception of large units and how the market is developing and the direction it has been moving in for the last few years.
As for business or not - MetoMoLA is a business whether it has charitable status or not, just like Oxford, Wessex, Cotswold, Headland, AOC and everyone else are businesses. Whatever status they claim otherwise, they still work in this market, they still work to business models and they are still reliant on the economic factors that most of their competitors are subject to. Whether they market themselves as local or not amounts to symantics to many of their clients who are interested primarily in cost.
I wonder if that's what whoever put the wording of the MoLA add together was thinking - they do provide services (or at least intend to) at a local level as opposed to a national or large infrastructure level. I suppose its all marketting at the end of the day, though. Incidentally, the company may not be local, but it doesn't mean the person who turns up for the watching brief or does the DBA, or the PM who oversees the costing, fieldwork and PX isn't local or doesn't have the knowledge base to understand the archaeology they are digging. It may well be that they aren't, but it isn't necessarily the case and it doesn't have to be that way. As I said, with Wessex, Cotswold, Headland et al adopting a localised/regional office structure and employing within a region rather than shipping staff in (thus saving themselves a wad of cash), the result is exactly that local service you're talking about, isn't it?
As for business or not - MetoMoLA is a business whether it has charitable status or not, just like Oxford, Wessex, Cotswold, Headland, AOC and everyone else are businesses. Whatever status they claim otherwise, they still work in this market, they still work to business models and they are still reliant on the economic factors that most of their competitors are subject to. Whether they market themselves as local or not amounts to symantics to many of their clients who are interested primarily in cost.
I wonder if that's what whoever put the wording of the MoLA add together was thinking - they do provide services (or at least intend to) at a local level as opposed to a national or large infrastructure level. I suppose its all marketting at the end of the day, though. Incidentally, the company may not be local, but it doesn't mean the person who turns up for the watching brief or does the DBA, or the PM who oversees the costing, fieldwork and PX isn't local or doesn't have the knowledge base to understand the archaeology they are digging. It may well be that they aren't, but it isn't necessarily the case and it doesn't have to be that way. As I said, with Wessex, Cotswold, Headland et al adopting a localised/regional office structure and employing within a region rather than shipping staff in (thus saving themselves a wad of cash), the result is exactly that local service you're talking about, isn't it?