IfA Recession Seminar: priorities for action

[BAJR Host]

IfA Recession Seminar: priorities for further action

Those present agreed that the following should be recognised as priorities:


1. to ensure that redundancies are necessary through careful review within organisations, taking advice where needed
2. to retain skills as far as possible, in the understanding that those with best skills will be better positioned to respond when the situation improves
3. to investigate further what skills the sector as a whole will have, and what it will need at upturn
4. to ensure that recruitment standards are not lowered once the market picks up ? rather that the value of proper skills be rewarded
5. to make the link between the planning process and quality/standards
6. to communicate public/social value of archaeology to those outside the profession
7. to create or support a new structure for the market for the future
8. to ensure that the PPS has teeth ? grounded in precedent, and with strong enforcement (including the possibility of more frequent use of S.106s)
9. to ensure funding for PX, especially where SPVs are involved, perhaps through up front payment ? through dialogue with the planning community
10. for all to make commitments not to undermine our own market by dropping prices, and place greater value on quality
11. to pursue the need for better model conditions
12. to ensure that organisations have sustainable business strategies
13. to look at and improve commercial risk management processes within businesses
14. to ensure the structure of the future market by defining market for each business clearly
15. to make more decisions based on the quality, not quantity of archaeological work that?s achievable through the planning process
16. to understand our market better, through the advice and expertise of those outside it and within the he sector as a whole
17. to make the pitch for archaeology in new terms ? terms that reflect current priorities and agenda

?When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.?
William Blake

[kevin wooldridge]

I am intrigued by point 7. Is this an admission by the IfA that the present system of competitive archaeological trading is both unsustainable and detrimental to the discipline?

Or am I reading too much into this.....



With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...

[1man1desk]

Posted by Kevin Wooldridge:

quote: I am intrigued by point 7. Is this an admission by the IfA that the present system of competitive archaeological trading is both unsustainable and detrimental to the discipline?

I don't know, because I wasn't there, but I doubt it. After all, it still uses the word 'market'.

Personally, I disagree with your premise. Competition is not necessarily unsustainable or detrimental to the discipline. What is needed, though, is to ensure that competition is not based solely on price.

Most of my experience relates to major infrastructure projects, so what I have to say may be less relevant to smaller projects. However, I have observed an increasing trend in recent years for quality/reliability/health and safety to be as important, or more important, in winning tenders than price.

That has always been the case with my company, and I am seeing it more often with other consultancies as well. That attitude gets support from the major infrastructure clients and from the major construction contractors, because they see archaeology more in terms of project risk (delay, regulatory problems) than in terms of cost.

As a result, it is now quite common for the cheapest tender to be rejected on quality-related grounds. This approach, and the encouragement it gives consultants to emphasise quality, can only help to push up standards, often against the furious opposition of the archaeological units.

1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Oxbeast]

I think that this is point 15, with a bit of point 5 1man. There is some good stuff here, but I confess to not being able to understand point 11.

[Paul Belford]

I think point 11 is a reference to the generic PPG16 condition:

"No development shall take place within the area indicated (this would be the area of archaeological interest) until the applicant has secured the implementation of a programme of archaeological work in accordance with a written scheme of investigation which has been approved by the Planning Authority"

...and the need to develop a set of more specific models for conditions which are bit tighter.

In response to 1man, who is lucky to find himself at the 'top end', I have to say that further down the chain competing for work for small-scale jobs is extremely difficult and not very profitable.

quote:This approach, and the encouragement it gives consultants to emphasise quality, can only help to push up standards, often against the furious opposition of the archaeological units.

To provide balance, I have to say that my own experience is the other way about. I have tendered for work through a number of major national consultancies with negative results because my price has been too high as a result of my concern to maintain standards - both of archaeological recording and other issues such as health and safety.

Many of us run archaeological units with a committment to quality, but are being squeezed out at the lower end of the market by insufficiently rigorous curatorial briefs, or by pricing factors.