14th April 2007, 01:05 AM
Some very good points, however:
I can see where you are coming from and while I have nothing against the RAO scheme, I do think it presents some issues when tauted as the way to improve wages. Namely that I do not think that the IFA has, or will have in the near (or distant) future, the resources to monitor the RAOs for this to be a sole mechanism for ensuring the consistent application of standards, after all there are hardly any people actually working at the IFA, and they are very busy as it is!
However, there are curators in every county (well...almost) whose job is to ensure that work is done to an agreed standard, which is usually based on IFA guidelines anyway. This is why the collective action of curators will always have a much larger impact on the market than what the IFA does.
And no vulpes, I do not think I am overplaying this at all, on a large excavation, when one can estimate the number of features and their type (through a thorough evaluative phase of works), assuming that you can get away with a 5% sample of the ditches instead of the 10% usually stated in briefs can take tens of thousands off a quote. And yet when I was running sites I had curators come to site, look around and ask if we were done that week, even though we were not even half way through doing what their brief required!! It was not because this person wasn't any good, or didn't care, it was because they couldn't spare more than 45 mins to view a large site with lots going on in it. When you are that tight on time you can't see everything! Yet these actions directly affect the level of resources allocated in tenders, as contractors use past performance figures to cost new work, hence affecting the prices.
I am not, by the way saying that the current situation is the fault of curators, I am saying that their actions and interpretations have very significant effects on the market as in doing their job, they are the only real 'market regulator' we have. Therefore, if they were given more resources and by extension more time to accurately determine the scope of works and monitor them, it would undoubtedly have an effect on the market.
don't panic!
Quote:quote:Originally posted by historic building
If you want to improve standards as a means to increasing the professionalism of the archaeological world and this then impacting upon pay then the IFA really is the only game in town. The RAO scheme, and organisations being removed from it enables curators to be able to say âorganisation X is not up to the job because they cannot maintain their RAO registrationâ.
I can see where you are coming from and while I have nothing against the RAO scheme, I do think it presents some issues when tauted as the way to improve wages. Namely that I do not think that the IFA has, or will have in the near (or distant) future, the resources to monitor the RAOs for this to be a sole mechanism for ensuring the consistent application of standards, after all there are hardly any people actually working at the IFA, and they are very busy as it is!
However, there are curators in every county (well...almost) whose job is to ensure that work is done to an agreed standard, which is usually based on IFA guidelines anyway. This is why the collective action of curators will always have a much larger impact on the market than what the IFA does.
And no vulpes, I do not think I am overplaying this at all, on a large excavation, when one can estimate the number of features and their type (through a thorough evaluative phase of works), assuming that you can get away with a 5% sample of the ditches instead of the 10% usually stated in briefs can take tens of thousands off a quote. And yet when I was running sites I had curators come to site, look around and ask if we were done that week, even though we were not even half way through doing what their brief required!! It was not because this person wasn't any good, or didn't care, it was because they couldn't spare more than 45 mins to view a large site with lots going on in it. When you are that tight on time you can't see everything! Yet these actions directly affect the level of resources allocated in tenders, as contractors use past performance figures to cost new work, hence affecting the prices.
I am not, by the way saying that the current situation is the fault of curators, I am saying that their actions and interpretations have very significant effects on the market as in doing their job, they are the only real 'market regulator' we have. Therefore, if they were given more resources and by extension more time to accurately determine the scope of works and monitor them, it would undoubtedly have an effect on the market.
don't panic!