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23rd April 2006, 11:53 AM
1man1opinion-
"Regularly" is a bit different from doing the job for a living.As I have said before (endless regurgitations to please you and your apologist posse) I have gone down the formal routes before.I`m not even slightly interested in whether you share a realistic view or otherwise, endless attempts at pseudo-legal deconstruction of everything I have to say only serves to illustrate the appalling level of understanding that you actually possess.There are thousands of field archaeologists out here who (in my opinion) would find it extremely offensive when a consultant chooses to impose his/her misguided and ill-informed version of reality upon those who do the job for a living. Instead of perpetuating the 1man1opinion method of "offended from Watford" diatribe-could we please.....please attempt to confront the issues.
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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24th April 2006, 11:50 AM
From Troll:
Quote:quote:I have gone down the formal routes before
Well, that's news. I have asked several times, and you have never said you went down those formal routes - instead, you have said that it would be pointless to do so.
'Confronting the issues' involves actually
doing something. Again, I have asked before without getting an answer - what actual action have you ever taken? I have yet to see any evidence of any, or even a claim from you to have taken any.
C'mon - 'fess up - I have said what action I have taken, so now it's your turn.
1man1desk
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25th April 2006, 09:23 PM
Evening 1man
How many other industries out there pass the maintenance of professional standards and related issues to those widely seen as the bottom of the employment pile? How many so-called "whistle blowers" continued their chosen career after such an episode?
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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26th April 2006, 10:34 AM
As far as I am aware, every professional institute in the UK that publishes professional standards and has a disciplinary code relies on members of the profession, or members of the public, to report/complain about breaches. I am not aware of any professional institution that does active policing. I would be very interested if you were to let me know of any examples.
As I have often mentioned before - the IFA has put procedures in place to protect the identity of whistleblowers.
1man1desk
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26th April 2006, 11:36 AM
1man is correct and I have extensive experience of the construction related professions, and family in medicine. None in Law, mercifully. I suppose to some extent teacher's have the inspectors in at 5 year intervals but it's not quite the same thing. The idea of "active policing" is actually quite absurd.
I would also add that the IFA didn't just make everything up from scratch (although that seems to be the norm in archaeology!). Everything seems to be parallel to other professions.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
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27th April 2006, 12:49 PM
Gday Invisible...
From what I have seen (almost every day) over the past eight years-it is completely absurd that an unregulated industry with optional standards in a competative environment is allowed to operate upon a national finite resource unfettered by active policing!
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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27th April 2006, 03:31 PM
Good afternoon Troll.
I have grave doubts that competitive tendering is th ebest, or even an appropriate, method for carrying out development related archaeology, so if that's what you are driving at, we are as one on that subject. However, I fear we are stuck with it, so plan B is to make it work as best we can.
Malpractice, shoddy work, short-cutting, trashing archaeology, poor H&S and so on is indeed reprehensible and unprofessional and probably not accordance with the contract and planning conditions for the given situation. It seems to me that the villains in the piece are the contractors, and it is they upon whom pressure should be brought to bear.
Policing, by which I presume you mean regular inspection of sites, offices and textual material, is just not practical. I think it was 1man who worked up some simple stats to show how many inspectors would be needed, and that was to make just on evisit per site if memory serves. Policing in effect should be provided by curators (but we've been here many times before) in a similar way to a building inspector but they far too under-resourced (Northants springs to mind here...). Consultants have a role here as 1man has made clear. Certainly staff of all levels if they regard themselves as professional should by definition not carry out unprofessional tasks or procedures. I understand the difficulties, but all for one and one for all...
One approach to this (frankly) unprofessionalism is to improve the cut-throat price-cutting hand to mouth existence which this forum tends to portray. The best way to do this IMHO is to introduce sensible tendering and pricing procedures (that I have droned on about before) so that units will be paid for what they do, and thus not be tempted to not do it. There would then be no reason not to things properly, or not to provide proper hutting, loos, H&S etc - in fact every incentive to do so. Just like a building site really... see also the last TA.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
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27th April 2006, 07:01 PM
Greetings and salutations Invisible! Agreed.Competative tendering has the nasty habit of driving standards down with the prices.I see Thatchers legacy as nothing short of a government washing its hands of the nations heritage and throwing it to the market forces.No government since has been brave enough to re-address this issue....just a quickie to the dodgy units out there who skimp on the budget when it comes to HS and welfare facilities for site staff-INCLUDE IT IN THE BUDGET! Tiz not rocket science.Tiz the law.
Good to hear from you sir.
..knowledge without action is insanity and action without knowledge is vanity..(imam ghazali,ayyuhal-walad)
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28th April 2006, 02:08 PM
One issue I'd like to clear up - I don't disagree with Troll that policing of IFA standards is desirable; I just think that it is not practicable for the IFA to do it.
One way of looking at this is by analogy with the separation of powers in government. You could view the IFA as a sort of legislature, in that they make the rules, but not as the executive, which enforces them through policing. At present, the nearest thing to an executive that we have is a combination of curators and EH.
On competitive tendering - if you use detailed Bills of Quantities (BoQ), you can easily identify whether a specific item has been provided or not and how much to dock the contrator's payment by if they don't provide it. Detailed BofQs give you something to measure the contractor's performance by, and enable more effective policing, if there is someone there (the consultant? curator?) to do the policing. However, if the IFA was to do this themselves, they would need a staff of hundreds based in regional offices all over the country.
1man1desk
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28th April 2006, 02:15 PM
It would be the consultant who did it (equivalent role to the architect assisted by the QS)). The curator would look at it in broad terms but the consultan would be doing it as part of a valuation, as well as in pure quality terms.
Of course it works the other way too, which was my main point. The contractor would get paid for all work done thus removing the risk element.
We owe the dead nothing but the truth.
