10th February 2009, 03:30 PM
It is thorny, and I will support the musing of my learned colleague Steven. It's not what you have, it's how you use it....
We don't have a standard 'list' per se, although we will provide people, if they ask, with the names and details of organisations that have been recently doing comparable work in the area to a good standard. And we ALWAYS include the IFA number and encourage use of ROs. It has to be recognised that it is often a 'horses for courses' situation, where a group that might do fantastic watching briefs couldn't resource an excavation, or someone might do a bang up job on a military site but not have experience with medieval cemeteries. Often the biggest unit may not be what they need....
We will shortly be putting out new standards and guidance papers, and at the moment the draft says we will only accept specifications from ROs or MIFAs. I'm not sure how this will pan out, may not even make the final cut. But we're encouraging our one-man-band outfits to apply for one or the other.
But to be honest, we don't get asked for lists very often, I only get asked maybe once every two or three months. Most developers already have someone on board, it tends to be only the one off very small scale developers who need a pointer.
ML
We don't have a standard 'list' per se, although we will provide people, if they ask, with the names and details of organisations that have been recently doing comparable work in the area to a good standard. And we ALWAYS include the IFA number and encourage use of ROs. It has to be recognised that it is often a 'horses for courses' situation, where a group that might do fantastic watching briefs couldn't resource an excavation, or someone might do a bang up job on a military site but not have experience with medieval cemeteries. Often the biggest unit may not be what they need....
We will shortly be putting out new standards and guidance papers, and at the moment the draft says we will only accept specifications from ROs or MIFAs. I'm not sure how this will pan out, may not even make the final cut. But we're encouraging our one-man-band outfits to apply for one or the other.
But to be honest, we don't get asked for lists very often, I only get asked maybe once every two or three months. Most developers already have someone on board, it tends to be only the one off very small scale developers who need a pointer.
ML