Agreements about the conduct of parties undertaking CHMP work may be useful to enter into ahead of CHMP fieldwork, and may be either single documents governing the entirety of a CHMP, or broken into the CHMP stages. Such agreements may cover the way in which a CHMP undertakes work under section 60. While it may be preferable for parties to enter into such agreements before undertaking any CHMP work, it is a matter between the relevant parties on whether to enter into such agreements. A party (whether it be a RAP, Sponsor or HA) can choose whether to enter into the agreements or not.
Universal agreement templates or contracts may be developed and published by each RAP as corporate documents, to provide additional certainty ahead of time to Sponsors and HAs about how a RAP prefers CHMPs and post CHMP works in its area to be conducted. These could be varied depending on the CHMP with mutual agreement. It is not necessary to develop bespoke conduct agreements for each CHMP if standard conduct agreements are in place and acceptable to all parties.
CHMP conduct agreements do not need to be included in the CHMP.
The following are suggested additional steps if the above is not the case.
Standard assessment conduct agreement
This is intended to cover practical procedures to apply while working onsite.
A CHMP conduct agreement may include the following:
- Expected daily hours of work for HAs and RAPs
- Agreed fees for RAP services, including meeting fees, survey supervision and participation fees and excavation supervision and participation fees (and any other fees as stipulated by the parties)
- Expectations for communication and responding to requests
- Minimum daily rates where work is impacted by weather
- Minimum RAP personnel required for work to commence and continue
- When/if work can continue without RAP attendance
- Agreed fieldwork dates
- Agreed meeting dates, venues, required personnel and times, along with fee schedules
- RAP personnel experience requirements for standard and complex assessment work
- Failure to implement agreement contingencies
DPC does not consider CHMP conduct agreement matters legitimate grounds on their own for refusing to approve a CHMP, and these do not need to be documented in the CHMP.
Dispute resolution options are available to resolve matters.
Complex assessment conduct agreement
This should mirror the approach described above. That conduct agreement should provide a ready template for this one.
Salvage conduct agreement
If archaeological salvage is a proposed condition of the CHMP, and subject to the agreement of all parties, a Salvage Conduct Agreement should be agreed after the CHMP is approved and before salvage work commences.
A Salvage Conduct Agreement should include the following:
- Expected daily hours of work for HAs and RAPs
- Agreed fees for RAP services, including meeting fees, salvage supervision and participation fees (and any other fees as stipulated by the parties)
- Expectations for communication and responding to requests
- Minimum daily rates where work is impacted by weather
- Minimum RAP personnel required for work to commence and continue
- When work can continue without RAP attendance
- Agreed fieldwork dates
- Agreed meeting dates, venues, required personnel and times, along with fee schedules
- RAP personnel experience requirements
- Failure to implement agreement contingencies.
Note the Salvage Strategy should be agreed before the CHMP has been approved, so it can be attached to the CHMP conditions. However, the Salvage Conduct Agreement may be agreed after the CHMP has been approved, so as not to create a potential obstacle to CHMP approval or to development scheduling. A Salvage Strategy should not include the matters covered in the Salvage conduct agreement.
DPC does not consider Salvage Conduct Agreement matters legitimate grounds on their own for refusing to approve a CHMP.
Updated