Crisis ? What Crisis? A Way forward?

[1man1desk]

Posted by the Invisible Man:

quote:Tenders should be truly like for like, quantified, confidential, and opened on the same day. As in construction, you inform all tenderers who the others were (alphabetically) and give a list of tenders submitted (numerically) and all is above board, in theory. I suppose what I am saying is more work for consultants and indeed curators. (I am neither)

I agree entirely, and that is what we do as consultants. The other thing we do is to score tenders on quality. Recently, we have been requiring that the price is given in a separate envelope. We open the quality submission first, and only open the price envelope if a certain quality mark is achieved. Otherwise, the tender is rejected without examining the price.

Posted by Windbag:

quote:As for competitive tendering, it's a nice idea but the quality of tender documents you see from clients is extremely variable- sometimes it's really obvious they have cut and pasted from a previous document without any understanding of the project or the role of an archaeologist within it.

That is why you need archaeological consultants to procure the archaeological work - if you don't, then you get someone doing the job who hasn't the foggiest. It is also why the use of a standard contract (such as the ICE Conditions of Contract for Archaeological Investigation) is advisable for jobs of any significant size.

Of course, if you are going to include quality criteria in your tender assessment process, then you have to have someone knowledgeable to do that too. Tenders assessed by a non-archaeologist will usually be done on price only, because they have no other basis to work from.

1man1desk

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