9th December 2011, 02:29 PM
the invisible man Wrote:Marcus: yes, that is indeed the analogy I was attempting to draw - curator = planning/BC officer, consultant = architect, and of course contractor = contractor. This is no coincidence, the somewhat artificial structure of commercial archaeology was set up to mirror construction and hence the similarlity in terminology.
Jack, I should be there or thereabouts, it's what I did before I lurched into archaeology. As I mentioned, for simplicity and the sake of this discussion and the analogies of roles I glossed over self-certification and 'privatised' building control ('approved inspectors') which was introduced in the late 90s for most classes of buildings. There is indeed a fee for Building Control, whether going down the Full Plans route or submitting a Notice or using a private bod, but not if 'self-certified' by a 'competent person'. Building Control inspects the site at certain pre-defined stages, before certain things are ciovered up - drains, dpc and so on. They are not so much 'asked', a contractor is obliged to inform them before covering up such work. Not that all this has much to do with anything...
Quality in this sense does not equate to regulation compliance, but to compliance with a contract. To flog my analogy further, Building Control (council or private!) have no remit over what (say) a brick wall or a painted surface looks like, provided it is sound and stable. Quality, as may be defined in a contract, will require rather more.
Yep...................but 'god' is in the detail. Especially as it seems that the government seems to be pushing our industry towards similar privatised 'archaeological control'