By Russel Coleman, Headland Archaeology Managing Director
Our archaeologists are often first on-site to offer heritage and archaeology services with a real focus on identifying and managing risk. At the early stages of a project, this will often be feasibility studies to give an early warning of potential cultural heritage issues. By working with our clients at the earliest opportunity, we can provide expert understanding of the constraints and risks associated with the site and can help our clients to make informed decisions on how to proceed.
Traditionally, ground investigation work and other geotechnical elements follow, and these are procured by engineering teams. Typically, there is very little engagement between the engineering and archaeological team members, who complete their own elements of the project independently.
However, there is so much potential here for service bundling and collaborative working. It would make good sense to bundle intrusive services, such as archaeological surveys and ground investigations, together, so that they can be conducted in parallel rather than sequentially. This would achieve significant time and cost savings for the client. One business could even deliver all the services required.
For example, Headland Archaeology’s fellow RSK group business, Structural Soils, could partner with us to offer geotechnical and geoenvironmental site investigation services at the same time as our archaeology and heritage services. Establishing this parallel working process at an early stage could mean that the work is less intrusive: one area of ground could be dug up for both ground investigation and archaeological survey work, for example, rather than two different sites on two different occasions.
Furthermore, ground investigation work on site, such as trial pitting, soil and rock boreholes, in-situ testing and geophysical testing, often requires land access, which can be challenging. Obstacles can include liaison, access routes, protection and reinstatement of ground surfaces and timing of the work in relation to crops or livestock movements, which can often lead to access payments for the client. Considering services in parallel keeps the required land access to a minimum and reduces the fees payable.
To establish how successful this bundling could be, Headland costed up a trial-trenching project for a road-widening scheme in the north of England that Structural Soils had recently worked on. Our conclusions were that employing Headland and Structural Soils in collaboration at an early stage would have been both possible and beneficial to the client. The archaeological work took less time than the ground investigations, so could have fitted within the ground investigation schedule rather than as a second programme of work. The partnership would have offered significant time savings and some cost savings. Scaled up for a bigger project, cost savings could have been significant. If both services had been combined into a single tender, this would have given the client further management and legal savings, and it would have been more straightforward to deal with a single contact point. Furthermore, the two businesses would have been able to share welfare facilities. The reduction and streamlining of contact with landowners and tenant farmers would have led to a need for fewer access occasions and a potential reduction in claims.
And bundling does not only apply to archaeology and ground investigation. There are many different services that could be undertaken simultaneously. Non-intrusive services would be ideal bundling options, for example, geophysical and ecological surveys. We at Headland offer geophysical surveys and our colleagues in RSK Biocensus, a leading ecological consultancy, could work in collaboration with us to deliver ecological services at the same time. The list goes on: there are many services that could be bundled, and these can be identified by the various experts within each business area.
Perhaps one of the challenges with this way of working is ensuring that seasons align with the work being delivered. Ecological surveys, for example, often need to be delivered at certain times of the year. However, consultancies are very aware of these time constraints and if the right people are brought into the project collaboratively, at an early stage, they are able to accommodate these restrictions in their working plans. Headland Archaeology works to ecological cycles for many of its services, for example, geophysical surveys are conducted after spring, in line with cropping cycles. Collaboration at an early stage would determine whether these cycles aligned. If various elements of a project are dictated by cycles and seasons, the timing would have to be considered anyway, so it makes sense to assess everything and programme it all in at the beginning.
The key current obstacle to achieving collaboration through bundling is that developers and their agents tend to approach all parties too late to establish this partnership. The traditional process is to come to archaeological providers first, then to move on to consider geotechnical elements at a later stage. If we can change this routine so that developers know to approach multiple service providers very early on, significant cost and time savings could be achieved. If they tender for these services in parallel, they may find that one company could offer all the services as a package and thus collaborate to provide everything required in a more efficient manner.