Understanding Conservation

This on-line resource for professionals involved in repair, maintenance and conservation work on traditional buildings will be of interest to members of professional bodies who run an accreditation scheme in building conservation.

Over the past 17 years a number of Conservation Accreditation Schemes have emerged. Each has had the intention of improving the abilities and competencies of individual practitioners through a peer-review process of submitted portfolio evidence. Their emergence is also a response to the increasing awareness of the high volume of work in the conservation, repair and maintenance sector of the construction industry.

Whilst common in their intentions, sufficient differences existed in their original form to warrant a review of how they might be brought into a common framework.

That work was overseen by a pan-professional body in the form of “the Edinburgh Group”; now under the auspices of COTAC. One of the results has been the creation of the website: www.understandingconservation.org

The website is fully supported by the Architecture, Surveying and Engineering professional bodies, who are represented on the Edinburgh Group.

Incorporating the internationally recognised ICOMOS Training and Education Guidelines, the site is open to all and has two purposes.

Primarily it aims to support individual practitioners who wish to apply for accredited status from their professional body. A variety of support tools are available for professional users so they can work their way through the material and build up a portfolio of evidence for assessment. This is achieved by directing users to reading lists, web sites to visit and suggesting suitable evidence for portfolio. The site also aims to test practitioners’ clarity of understanding of the philosophy and practice underpinning conservation by posing rhetorical questions to encourage research. It is fundamentally a self-assessment tool with the intention of assisting practitioners, presenting for accreditation, with a method of testing their approach to conservation, setting this against internationally recognised skill set requirements.

In addition to this primary aim, the site will provide useful educational material for a much broader range of users. This will include students, general practitioners, training and education providers, building contractors and the interested public. In this capacity the site will assist those directly involved in carrying out more effective repair and maintenance on the country’s existing building stock.

The site has been available since April 2007 and was updated in June 2009.