Future Monopoly?

[vulpes]

no, North Bucks maybe.

[ShadowJack]

As someone on the inside,of both the old and new, it's been interesting following this thread.

What can I tell you? Well, for starters - OA weren't the largest organisation that expressed an interest in our externalisation. In terms of annual turnover and staffing levels, there was a substantially larger organisation - but the majority of staff, including myself, felt that OA were the only interested body that shared the same work ethic culture, commitment to open archaeology and whose standards were more akin to our own.

All staff have been transfered under TUPE, retaining our terms and conditions of employment, pensions etc. There may well be a harmonisation of pay grades and scales at some point - but then it will be up to individual staff as to whether or not they wish to take up an OA contract of employement or remain with the terms and conditions that were transfered under TUPE.

As to the question of monopoly and whether this is a good or bad for the profession.....does anyone out there really think the rise of competative tendering was a good thing for the archaeology we investigate? If you need to cut tenders to the bone to win contracts, something has to give if you end up bitting off more than you can chew.

Unitof1...

SLA/ALSF - subsidies??!! Tell me - what's the difference between entering into an agreement to provide a service to a local authority and providing a service to a housing developer, quarry company, EH, or the various framework agreements that are starting to spring up?

Yes - we did have a lot of pensions walking around, we still do.

Backlog? You know, what I find interesting is the number of times during this externalisation process that concern was expressed to me on the outside about liabilitiy of and commitment to backlog - and how those that did, didn't once raise concerns of staffing, commitment to outreach, standards etc.

Looking forward to seeing the charity accounts? Look forward to seeing your own.








ShadowJack

[BAJR Host]

Nice one!

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[Sparky]

By the sounds of things, Unitof1 doesn't have enough accounts to declare.

[1man1desk]

Posted by ShadowJack:

quote:As to the question of monopoly and whether this is a good or bad for the profession.....does anyone out there really think the rise of competative tendering was a good thing for the archaeology we investigate? If you need to cut tenders to the bone to win contracts, something has to give if you end up biting off more than you can chew.

Actually, yes I do think it was good for the archaeology, quite strongly, and I will tell you why.

People's perception of higher standards before PPG16 is mainly because there was more research excavation than 'rescue' work then. Rescue work was done on a shoestring, often to very low standards, and often was not done at all. Modern PPG16 work is probably 95% of the total workload. It is probably not done to quite the standard of a research excavation, but it is much closer to that standard than to the standards applied on a lot of pre-PPG16 rescue excavations. I will give you a few examples in a moment, but I have a general point to make first.

Competitive tendering really came out of PPG16, and was a corollorary of developer funding, both for evaluation before the planning application is determined (which rarely if ever happened before) and for the mitigation excavations under planning conditions after determination.

As a result, the curator does not have to find a budget for the fieldwork and then for the post-ex, as they did before the advent of developer funding. That means that they are far more likely to impose archaeological requirements, both before and after determination, and the scale of work done is usually much larger.

The standard of work done is often much better as well. I can remember several jobs I worked on where only the fieldwork was funded, and then the scope of work was determined purely by budget with no consideration of the needs of the site. There was no provision at all after the day the site closed. For example, if soil samples were collected at all, they might be left out in an open yard for several years before processing, because there was no indoor storage facility and no funding for the post-ex. That is an example (from Scotland) of the 'higher standards' that supposedly prevailed before developer funding.

On another site (in England), a major development in a historic town centre that effectively removed a well-preserved Roman vicus and early Medieval burgage plots was investigated through a 'watching brief' that consisted of a man watching from the street outside, through gaps in the site boundary hoardings.

Some years ago I wrote up a post-PPG16 excavation of a settlement enclosure for publication, and in doing so I did quite a bit of research on previous excavations on similar sites in the region.

Although our site was not very well-preserved, the whole affected area had been excavated very thoroughly, there had been a proper post-ex assessment, and all the recommended work had been implemented in reasonably good time.

For the previous excavations, all of which were in advance of development but before PPG16, the need for public funding meant that only the very best sites had been selected for archaeological investigation; other known sites, better than the one we dealt with, had been destroyed without excavation.

On the sites that had been investigated, the excavations had all been 'sampling' exersises. The better ones had excavated the entrance, another enclosure ditch/bank section and a proportion of the interior (perhaps up to 20%).

Under PPG16, many of these sites would have been protected, and all of those that were developed would certainly have been subject to 100% excavation of the affected area.

True, the work would be subject to competitive tendering, and each tenderer would try to keep costs down to win the job. However, the scope of work and standards to be applied that they would be tendering for would be pre-determined by someone else without a financial stake in keeping it small, and the curator could monitor the quality of work without fear of having to pay out of his own (tiny) budget for the cost of any standard he wanted to impose.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Unitof1]

Shaddowjack. Do you know how much the OA paid the tax payers of Cambridgeshire to buy the county councils archaeology unit and why was it up for sale?

Iman I have never actually tendered for anything, is it cause I is cheap

[BAJR Host]

is it cause I is cheap

- you said it...

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[ShadowJack]

1man1desk

Nice post - put's the current into the historical perspective.

But (there's always a but!) not sure I wholly agree with you.

Doesn't some of what you say used to occur still occur?

Post-PPG16:

Elizabethan painted plaster and fireplaces found dump in a skip during a medieval frontage development by a med specialist who was a tad surprised to find said development subject to a watching brief...where was the archaeologist?
Felt it wasn't necessary to be there all day - had other work to do.

Samples left outside for years - been there and had to dig them out from the undergrowth to get them processed!

'..pre-determined by someone else without a financial stake in keeping it small..' - and the role of the consultant these days is?

'..scope of work was determined purely by budget with no consideration of the needs of the site..' - seems a bit too familiar.

We could both spend way too much time swapping tales of woe - but that's not really the point I was trying to make.

The discussion upto that point had been, or appeared to be, focused on the impact of a monopoly on us as both individuals and as a profession.

Guess I wanted to folk to think of the impact such a senario might have on the archaeology itself. For better or worse?

Unitof1,

In response to your queries:

No.

Not really.

And I don't really care.



ShadowJack

[oldgirl]

The discussion upto that point had been, or appeared to be, focused on the impact of a monopoly on us as both individuals and as a profession.

Guess I wanted to folk to think of the impact such a senario might have on the archaeology itself. For better or worse?
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You're right, it is important to think about the archaeology as well and I think 1man made some really good points. In the case you mention, at least there WAS someone supposed to be there, so that was the individual not working (at least on that job!) rather than the system. There just wasn't a system before! Certainly not a national one!

Going back to the monopoly thing, the other thing to say about pre-competitive tendering, and something that wasn't mentioned by 1man, was the enormous amount of work that was done by the Manpower Services Commission (MSC). This was a work creation scheme run by the goverment for people over 21 who had been out of work and signing on for 6 months. Now, some really good people came through MSC, both people who were archaeology graduates and people that weren't, but there were also many schemes that were basically just there to take the people who couldn't/wouldn't be able to work at anything else. I was involved in taking on an archive assistant under this scheme and over half the applicants couldn't read or write.

The big MSC schemes had an almost total monopoly on archaeology in their areas. And there were no standards or guidance for them (bear in mind the IFA was only just getting going in the late 1980s and IF there was a county archaeologist they were usually running the MSC scheme - not even chinese walls then!), but this was the only port of call for the vast majority of people who wanted to get into archaeology. So, you had to be unemployed for 6 months unless you managed to get in as a supervisor (which I didn't) and then you worked a 3 day week for ?60. No career progression, if you hadn't made it to supervisor after a year you were off the scheme.

Not good for the archaeologists OR for the archaeology in many cases.

I think I prefer now!

(edited due to silly typos!)

[1man1desk]

Oldgirl,

Very good points about the MSC.

I worked on two MSC scemes, one of which was my first job as a supervisor. Probably the worst ten months of my life, at least in relation to work.

One point to bear in mind was that, although the MSC was the largest single funding body for archaeological fieldwork at the time, their actual aim was to find make-work jobs for the unemployed. Accordingly, they funded fieldwork only (because it is labour-intensive). There was no funding at all for post-ex.

The result on my scheme was that, as a new supervisor, I was left in overall charge on-site (at one point with two sites to run), although I had only a vague idea of how to do the job. No-one else on site had any knowledge (or interest) in archaeology at all.

The person who was supposed to be in charge on site was actually in the office full-time, doing the post-ex for previous projects with some of the funding provided for current site-work.

Luckily, the archaeology we were dealing with wasn't up to much, so I could learn the job through my own mistakes without doing too much damage.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished