Five years ago CIfA (then IfA) responded to recommendations in the 2011 Southport Report, Realising the benefits of planning-led investigation in the historic environment: a framework for delivery by updating the Standards and guidance for field evaluation, for excavation and for watching briefs.
The recommendations from the Southport Report were that written schemes of investigation (WSIs) should include explicit statements on public benefit, dissemination and community participation, research and the expertise of the project team and on archive creation, care and deposition. It also recommended that guidance on the scope of WSIs be revised to create a more standardised bidding document and promote the weighting of quality criteria in the procurement process.
To support archaeologists in understanding the requirements in the revised Standards and guidance we published a spotlight article outlining what WSIs should cover. This article can be downloaded from the link below.
Other spotlight articles on Standards and guidance for for desk-based assessment, for commissioning work or providing consultancy advice on archaeology and the historic environment, and on archaeological advice by historic environment services are available in the Professional practice papers and guidance section (member access only)
The Southport Report is available to download from our Reports and documents on professional archaeology page
