ࡱ> 796` pbjbj **p   $ h:D   D Y  :    ]   o 0 5 5 5 L"   - D D   Show me yours: Cost comparison in the Construction industry and its applicability to commercial archaeology Michael Heaton MIFA IHBC Most of us buy our cars second hand. Those of us bothered about cost will probably consult Parkers Used Car Price Guide or one of the specialist magazines or weekend motor supplements to find out what the book price is for a specific model, condition and mileage. These guides have no legal authority. They simply present the average price of a particular car across the UK based on a selection of transactions, but they are relied upon by car dealers and buyers alike as the basis for negotiating a purchase price. They indicate what purchasers are willing to pay. The construction industry operates a similar, but more complex system. The equivalent of Parkers is the Building Cost Information Service operated by the RICS, which publishes regularly updated analyses of what particular types of building or service cost in different parts of the country, broken down into elements such as groundworks, superstructure, glazing etc. It is a subscription service, heavily subscribed to by Quantity Surveyors and most other forms of construction professional. Annual compendia of construction costs are published by the BCIS as well as commercial publishers such as Spons; the journals of the professional institutes representing the construction professions RIBA, RICS, CIBSE etc., - all publish at least one building analysis per edition that presents a detailed breakdown of how much the featured building cost to design and build; and trade publications such as Construction News all publish the contract values (the successful tender price) of a wide range of projects on a weekly or monthly basis. This constantly updated library of cost information allows would-be purchasers of construction services to estimate what their project is likely to cost, before they start, and helps them compare tendered prices against completed projects. At the same time, it allows contractors to get a rough idea of what their competitors are charging for particular types of work. The latter, of course, is a product of materials costs and efficiency as well as charge rates. It allows construction clients and their advisors to test whether they are getting value for money and helps contractors estimate what the market rate for the job is, without restricting the freedom of either to set their budgets and prices as they see fit. Economists call it the Price System: it underpins the economic system that supports us all. Apart from the occasional list of other prices returned with unsuccessful tenders, Archaeology has nothing comparable. Indeed, most of us are very reticent about discussing prices at all largely out of embarrassment I suspect. Few of us have any verifiable idea of what other contractors are likely to charge for a particular job and this manifests itself in wildly differing prices for the same job, even when a tight specification and a detailed Bill of Quantities is supplied with the invitation to tender. This is highly unsettling to clients and their professional advisors, who are unable to assess whether the lowest tender is a realistic bargain or a highly risky gamble by an incompetent organization that might go bust in the middle of the project or, worse, increase the price incrementally once on-site. This is why they query prices not because they think they are expensive, but because they have no idea what a reasonable price should be. This lack of clarity distinguishes us from the other professions and trades, to our detriment. It perpetuates a distrust of archaeological motives and is preventing us being accepted by the other professions as an equal. It makes us look unprofessional. It neednt be like this. Without disclosing what we are individually charging for our time and it is crucial that we do not do that - we could easily publish the prices of a representative selection of projects in each edition of this journal and we could ask the BCIS etc. to include archaeological costs in their compendia. Published costs would have to be based on site volumes (urban) or areas (rural/infrastructure) and would have to include site operations, processing and analysis costs and show not just what we tendered, but what we actually charged at the end of the day. The only impediment, apart from our intransigence, is, ironically, the negligible scale of archaeological costs relative to construction in general. I suggest, therefore, that we also include the time taken to complete the archaeological works, because interest payments accrued during delays usually cost more than the archaeology causing them. You can check this assertion by using the British and Irish Legal Information Institute website, where you will find a detailed transcript of the recent legal disputes arising from the Birmingham Relief Road, including the archaeological costs. You may be surprised to learn how little we archaeologists value our time compared, for instance, to how road builders value security guards. 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