5th March 2009, 01:53 PM
Posted by Kevin Wooldridge:
Personally, I disagree with your premise. Competition is not necessarily unsustainable or detrimental to the discipline. What is needed, though, is to ensure that competition is not based solely on price.
Most of my experience relates to major infrastructure projects, so what I have to say may be less relevant to smaller projects. However, I have observed an increasing trend in recent years for quality/reliability/health and safety to be as important, or more important, in winning tenders than price.
That has always been the case with my company, and I am seeing it more often with other consultancies as well. That attitude gets support from the major infrastructure clients and from the major construction contractors, because they see archaeology more in terms of project risk (delay, regulatory problems) than in terms of cost.
As a result, it is now quite common for the cheapest tender to be rejected on quality-related grounds. This approach, and the encouragement it gives consultants to emphasise quality, can only help to push up standards, often against the furious opposition of the archaeological units.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished
Quote:quote: I am intrigued by point 7. Is this an admission by the IfA that the present system of competitive archaeological trading is both unsustainable and detrimental to the discipline?I don't know, because I wasn't there, but I doubt it. After all, it still uses the word 'market'.
Personally, I disagree with your premise. Competition is not necessarily unsustainable or detrimental to the discipline. What is needed, though, is to ensure that competition is not based solely on price.
Most of my experience relates to major infrastructure projects, so what I have to say may be less relevant to smaller projects. However, I have observed an increasing trend in recent years for quality/reliability/health and safety to be as important, or more important, in winning tenders than price.
That has always been the case with my company, and I am seeing it more often with other consultancies as well. That attitude gets support from the major infrastructure clients and from the major construction contractors, because they see archaeology more in terms of project risk (delay, regulatory problems) than in terms of cost.
As a result, it is now quite common for the cheapest tender to be rejected on quality-related grounds. This approach, and the encouragement it gives consultants to emphasise quality, can only help to push up standards, often against the furious opposition of the archaeological units.
1man1desk
to let, fully furnished