17th March 2007, 01:15 AM
A market force is only effective in a profession such as ours when it is properly regulated. What we do as archaeologists is not easy to verify as, say, a house once it is built. It is therefore very hard for any archaeological officer to verify consistent application of standards across the very large areas in which they are expected to 'police' on what are, more often than not, limited resources. This is of course compounded by a lack of real enforcement powers to deal with any offenders, as well as a lack of precedent for action in these cases.
This has the added effect of distorting normal practice in tender review, where a very cheap tender can be questioned and often disregarded as unrealistic if it is too far below an average as there is little to indicate to clients whether a price is realistic or not. After all they will not necessarily know good or bad practice, only that their planning condition has been discharged as the value of a unit's service (to the developer, obviously not to us) is the discharge of a condition not the quality of the archaeological work. I am obviously well aware that many consultants do advise their clients appropriately regarding pricing level (although many do not) and that the vast majority of county archaeologists work very hard indeed to hold units to their standards. And of course there are client's out there who care (very rare) or projects which rely on the results of the archaeological investigation (regeneration projects capitalising on heritage assets - not common enough to make an significant and constant impact on the market).
It only takes a very small percentage to pull the market value down, after all, it isn't simply that a unit in an area charges little and pays its archaeologists poorly. As many companies operate over a large area, it also means that other companies near that radius of operation do not have to offer that much more to entice people away. This magnifies the effect.
VoR's point about council backed units is valid as well as they will not be subject to the same cash flow issues as an 'independent' unit, meaning that they will find it easier to finance projects over a longer cycle, while also benefiting from the council's infrastructure for human resources and administration.
I would like to see more resources given to county archaeologists, a requirement for consistently earlier consideration of heritage in planning, clearer guidelines for enforcement and clearer research frameworks to make the requirements more transparent. This would allow units to better quantify the scope of the work they are tendering for and know that there will be repercussions should the entire project not be completed to the required specification. Only then will archaeologists, and by extension units, be rewarded for being more experienced and quicker at their job. I doubt that any amount of promises and pay agreements will ever have the desired effect until the archaeological market is properly regulated.....not that I object to any attempts to improve things in the meanwhile by the way!!!
This has the added effect of distorting normal practice in tender review, where a very cheap tender can be questioned and often disregarded as unrealistic if it is too far below an average as there is little to indicate to clients whether a price is realistic or not. After all they will not necessarily know good or bad practice, only that their planning condition has been discharged as the value of a unit's service (to the developer, obviously not to us) is the discharge of a condition not the quality of the archaeological work. I am obviously well aware that many consultants do advise their clients appropriately regarding pricing level (although many do not) and that the vast majority of county archaeologists work very hard indeed to hold units to their standards. And of course there are client's out there who care (very rare) or projects which rely on the results of the archaeological investigation (regeneration projects capitalising on heritage assets - not common enough to make an significant and constant impact on the market).
It only takes a very small percentage to pull the market value down, after all, it isn't simply that a unit in an area charges little and pays its archaeologists poorly. As many companies operate over a large area, it also means that other companies near that radius of operation do not have to offer that much more to entice people away. This magnifies the effect.
VoR's point about council backed units is valid as well as they will not be subject to the same cash flow issues as an 'independent' unit, meaning that they will find it easier to finance projects over a longer cycle, while also benefiting from the council's infrastructure for human resources and administration.
I would like to see more resources given to county archaeologists, a requirement for consistently earlier consideration of heritage in planning, clearer guidelines for enforcement and clearer research frameworks to make the requirements more transparent. This would allow units to better quantify the scope of the work they are tendering for and know that there will be repercussions should the entire project not be completed to the required specification. Only then will archaeologists, and by extension units, be rewarded for being more experienced and quicker at their job. I doubt that any amount of promises and pay agreements will ever have the desired effect until the archaeological market is properly regulated.....not that I object to any attempts to improve things in the meanwhile by the way!!!