19th October 2012, 04:27 PM
Very intersting debate about Watching Briefs......as a former Project Manager and current curator, I have very mixed feelings!
On the contract side they were a liscence to print money if managed correctly, you define the spec, call in extra people as you need them etc etc. However, you have to ensure your colleagues sign in, that youve agree the hourly rates and that youve got a post-ex mechanism. I can think of several projects that never got to post-ex and also of several with tens of thousands of pounds worth of work not paid for because of poor contract and site procedures.
Therefore as a curator I never reccomend them at all! and I don't believe in preservation in situ!
I also like digging and think that if the odd Scheduled Monument gets dug to make way for a road then as a whole we're better off if the project design is correctly written, after who else has the money to do real cutting edge research? no pun intended!
On the contract side they were a liscence to print money if managed correctly, you define the spec, call in extra people as you need them etc etc. However, you have to ensure your colleagues sign in, that youve agree the hourly rates and that youve got a post-ex mechanism. I can think of several projects that never got to post-ex and also of several with tens of thousands of pounds worth of work not paid for because of poor contract and site procedures.
Therefore as a curator I never reccomend them at all! and I don't believe in preservation in situ!
I also like digging and think that if the odd Scheduled Monument gets dug to make way for a road then as a whole we're better off if the project design is correctly written, after who else has the money to do real cutting edge research? no pun intended!