Bridging the Past and Present? How Heritage Consultancy Can Engage Across Disciplines and Audiences

In 2024 The Council for British Archaeology and CIfA's Early Careers Special Interest Group ran an online conference for early career archaeologists and heritage specialists to share their interests and research. The conference was delivered during Youth Day sponsored by the Royal Archaeological Institute as part of the CBA Festival of Archaeology.
Speaker: Holly Mepham
Blurb: By definition, a consultant is an individual who provides expert advice on a specialist subject. This succinct definition is far from incorrect in broadly describing the work of a heritage consultant. As part of the planning process, working as part of a team of consultants from various disciplines, a heritage consultant takes on the role of assessing the risks (in Environmental Impact Assessment terms, this might be impacts and associated effects on heritage assets or, in purer heritage terms, benefit, harm and loss), and offering advice on mitigation measures for heritage and archaeology (be it known or unknown, buried, or above ground) that has the potential to be impacted (or ‘changed’) by a development.
Given the ‘expert in the subject’ impression presented by the definition of a consultant and the separate roles of specialists across disciplines adhering to topic-specific legislation, policy and guidance for their specialism, it is easy to see how consultancy within the planning process may be viewed as a series of separate disciplines working independently within their specialisms, albeit to achieve a shared end goal. This is a view that this paper seeks to challenge.
Through an outline of my own experience starting out as a graduate heritage consultant with Royal HaskoningDHV, this talk will serve as an introduction to heritage consultancy. Through a presentation of case studies, including project examples, this talk will ultimately serve to highlight the wider role and opportunity presented to heritage consultants beyond the standard impression of consultancy. This talk will note how, through the promotion of knowledge sharing and increasing opportunity for understanding (as well as interactions across disciplines) within their work, heritage consultants can influence and support multidisciplinary specialists (as well as vice versa) - including the wider public audience (‘stakeholders’) of a project - to better support, champion and achieve better outcomes for heritage and archaeology, and the wider environment as a whole.