10th February 2009, 12:39 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by RedEarth
I'd be interested to know, especially from any curators lurking out there, how much variation there is in the way the County lists of contractors are compiled and maintained. I ask because it is increasingly bringing up issues that would be easily resolved if they simply never existed. The main problem is this - in the area I work there are a number of organisations, typically individuals, who do what is generally agreed to be pretty poor to sub-standard work.
Before I go any further, I want to make it clear that this is not a general attack on one-man-bands!
The issue with the lists is that as far as one can tell these inviduals, who are by nature of their limited overheads cheap, are made cheaper by the fact that they appear to make no effort to advertise themselves (not even an entry in Yellow pages, which is pretty cheap). They effectively get work because of the existance of 'The List', and will win it because they are cheap, which is, for the sort of small jobs they are doing, the key issue in most cases.
The local curator often complains that they do poor work, and yet has the power to stop them by either removing them from the list, which they won't do because the list is not of 'recommended' contractors, or by scrapping the list altogether. Yet they and the list remain.
My other concern about such lists is that as they often include names of companies/organisations/individuals from a wide area, which I would have thought further encourages aggressive tendering into areas quite distant from their base, and allows the developer to simply contact everyone on list, thus making sure they get the very lowest price and keeping rates and therefore wages as low as possible.
I'd be interested to know what other people's experience of county lists is like and any thoughts on the matter. Am I just being mean and paranoid?
Hi
Your not necessarily being mean or paranoid, but this issue has been discussed many times over the last decade and there has never been any resolution. There are so many pros and cons to lists its really hard to get consensus.
One point I would like to make is that monitoring standards of work is a separate issue! There is no causality between poor work and appearance on a list. If the curators are complaining about quality then they need to get tougher!
On your point about units tendering from a wide area....welcome to the Free Market Economy.
Steven