What is the history of the ecf office

John Upham · Post by **John Upham** » Tue Oct 20, 2009 11:03 pm

It is of relevance to those who are paid and to the desperate finances of the ECF...

Angus French · Post by **Angus French** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:09 am

Surely the first question is whether the graders' fee of Â£8,311 represents value for money. (And FWIW, I would guess that it does - it must take a substantial amount of effort to produce the grades.)

Matthew Turner · Post by **Matthew Turner** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:16 am

I tend to agree with Angus, however there is a slight question about exactly what the graders are being paid for. If they are being paid for developing a grading system then Â£8311 is probably very cheap. If it is merely a question of data entry then perhaps it is just fair value.
If John is so keen for us to know what everyone is paid by the ECF perhaps he could say how much he is getting for the CoM. For the record I budgetted Â£500 for developing the Certificate of Excellence, none of which I ever claimed.

John Upham · Post by **John Upham** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:07 am

Matthew Turner wrote: If John is so keen for us to know what everyone is paid by the ECF perhaps he could say how much he is getting for the CoM.

I'll let you know when the contract is delivered and the ECF pay me.

Matthew Turner · Post by **Matthew Turner** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:09 am

So, that is evading the question then.

John Upham · Post by **John Upham** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:15 am

Matthew Turner wrote:So, that is evading the question then.

yes, it could be hypothetical!

Carl Hibbard · Post by **Carl Hibbard** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:17 am

The current grading site was delivered and is hosted (now at 4 years...) for FREE and always will be

I could do with sorting out it's presentation though, as it's poor!

Roger de Coverly · Post by **Roger de Coverly** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:24 am

Matthew Turner wrote:If they are being paid for developing a grading system then Â£8311 is probably very cheap

Probably belongs on the grading thread but they
(1) came up with a controversial hypothesis that the grades were wrong
(2) jumped to a conclusion that the "cause" was the treatment of juniors
(3) spent a lot of time and perhaps money trying to make (2) work
(4) came up with a solution which is both unsound by general reasoning and breaks one of the underlying points of having a grading system in the first place.

Matthew Turner · Post by **Matthew Turner** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:41 am

John,
Just to clarify what you are saying, have I got it correct? You might never get paid, because (for whatever reason) you might not deliver the CoM - it might never happen?

Jonathan Rogers · Post by **Jonathan Rogers** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:48 am

I'm with Roger on this. One could hardly justify paying the graders much, if anything, based on recent outcomes.

Matthew Turner · Post by **Matthew Turner** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:56 am

Roger and Jonathan,
You are really questioning the competency of the grading team, or the appropriateness of their operating remit. This is a somewhat different question from whether Â£8311 is an appropriate fee for the job they are undertaking

Roger de Coverly · Post by **Roger de Coverly** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:14 am

Matthew Turner wrote:You are really questioning the competency of the grading team, or the appropriateness of their operating remit. This is a somewhat different question from whether Â£8311 is an appropriate fee for the job they are undertaking

The thought is that this year's cost is higher than it would be under "normal" circumstances because of all the multiple calculations and reworks. At the very least, the revaluation has lost us the "soft" time which could have been devoted to working on putting individual calculations on-line - as is done for the International system, the Scottish system and even the Yorkshire one.

Angus French · Post by **Angus French** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:55 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:The thought is that this year's cost is higher than it would be under "normal" circumstances because of all the multiple calculations and reworks

I'm not sure when development work was charged for (or if indeed there was a charge) - before or after the April 30 2009 - but, for comparison, the previous year's cost was Â£7,700.

Anyhow, for provision of the service, I believe the charge is small (and covered multiple times by grading fee and membership income). I don't know exactly what's involved but I'm sure a professional company would charge vastly more.

Ian Thompson · Post by **Ian Thompson** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:08 am

Angus French wrote:Anyhow, for provision of the service, I believe the charge is small (and covered multiple times by grading fee and membership income). I don't know exactly what's involved but I'm sure a professional company would charge vastly more.

I have an e-mail from Roger Edwards when he was involved with grading (doing, I think, the job now done by Richard Haddrell). He told me he was spending 60 hours per week on it when all the results were coming in at the end of the season. I think the processing is probably more efficient now than it was in 2000, but, even so, I'm sure its still a time consuming job.

Roger de Coverly · Post by **Roger de Coverly** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 11:19 am

Ian Thompson wrote:I think the processing is probably more efficient now than it was in 2000, but, even so, I'm sure its still a time consuming job.

I get the impression that because the processing was straightforward, they had the spare capacity to try and prove that the processing was wrong.

As well as general improvements in the programs, I think there have been three major improvements which have streamlined the calculation and publication process:-
(a) the computers are more capable at processing medium volumes of data - meaning that runs take seconds or minutes rather than hours.
(b) the data (particularly congresses) is submitted as it happens - so no big backlog
(c) the printed list deadline was removed - first publication is now getting a file to the bcfservices website.

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