6th August 2011, 11:39 AM
In our experience most of our clients would rather have a properly researched DBA with some suitable advice attached like 'move the building to the west side of the site to avoid the Roman cemetery that so-and-so dug in 1870 and is mis-located on the HER' - avoids lots of distress and expense further down the line....all comes down to educating the clients really, once it's been explained to them they can usually see that a little additional expenditure at the outset can potentially save them millions further down the line. And then they come back next time...
- of course this relies on employing people to do DBAs who are capable of hunting out original references/site records/archive/whatever and actually able to understand/reinterpret them in the wider context of the site, have enough practical experience to understand eg how much damage that Victorian carpet factory will have done to the site (often surprisingly little) etc etc. Its amazing how many urban sites have been lost unrecorded because they were written-off at the outset due to cellaring when there was probably plenty of evidence surviving between and below the cellars...
- of course this relies on employing people to do DBAs who are capable of hunting out original references/site records/archive/whatever and actually able to understand/reinterpret them in the wider context of the site, have enough practical experience to understand eg how much damage that Victorian carpet factory will have done to the site (often surprisingly little) etc etc. Its amazing how many urban sites have been lost unrecorded because they were written-off at the outset due to cellaring when there was probably plenty of evidence surviving between and below the cellars...