price and value

[1man1desk]

My experience is that the bigger and more expensive the development, the more pressure any archaeologist is put under to justify their budget/programme. However, the larger developers take a very professional and pragmatic attitude. if you can put a robust, convincing case, you are more likely to be given the necessary resources/time/etc on a big scheme. Small schemes with small developers have much smaller margins and often less professional management. They are more likely to want to circumvent the condition, trash the archaeology or otherwise behave unreasonably.

Having attended a lot of meetings with large developer clients, I am awere that they treat their architects, engineering consultants, earthworks contractors etc in the same way - pressure to justify the time/resources they ask for, usually leading to tight but reasonable agreements.



1man1desk

to let, fully furnished

[Cautionary Tale]

I would tend to agree. A larger project is more likely to have gone through a due diligence process whereby, as 1man says, budgets are argued for and justified frequently on a worst case scenario. I would hope situations like the "look, this is a 100million pound development-just get it out" will become a thing of the past with archaeological involvement in due diligence, ES and EIA earlier in the planning process. I know of several projects where archaeological work has be planned for a period of several years prior to site works being planned because of good planning.

Of the Clan Sutton

[mercenary]

quote:a robust, convincing case

Hear, hear. This must be the key both for individual archaeologists and as an industry. Stand up for yourself and present a coherent argument and you will be respected by developers.