30th October 2006, 07:14 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by Curator Kid
I would advise these staff to leave en-masse at the earliest opportunity.
hear hear
I might add that there's nothing wrong with cowboy companies going to the wall.
I have been occasionally suspicious that curators have worked very hard to help out units who got into trouble not due to bad luck (finding more than they can cope with) but because they consistently undercut their rivals, evaluate poorly and otherwise act with incompetence or unprofessionalism. I don't understand why curators will help a unit go back and get more money in these kinds of instances. Why not tell the unit to take it on the chin, and the client that his condition won't be lifted? Would the dodgy unit not then go bust (if they couldn't take the loss), and possibly a different company be brought in to do the job properly?
Never having been a curator myself, I would welcome broader opinions. However, this kind of accountability seems like the kind of thing that would foster greater professionalism, and would benefit the well-paying companies to the detriment of the cowboys. I appreciate that this kind of suggestion carries considerable risk, but risk management is a bankable commodity, and so the units could charge more for their services. It might also help make explicit the implications of assessments: i.e. 'there is a statistical probability of x that the development will not encounter Roman settlement evidence' etc. That way you'd have legal redress if you did find something spectacular that the client could justifiably be asked for more money for.
I haven't really thought this through, and as I say it's hardly my specialist subject. Perhaps this sugestion would just create work for lawyers. It also might see the end of the small companies, swallowed up by a few big players (free market capitalism does lead to monopoly). However, companies who operate in the way that Gizmo describes don't deserve to survive and are holding the industry back.
'Have a good plan, execute it violently, do it today'.
General MacArthur