Aimée L Felton 2012

86 EIGHT focused organisations to help write documents. Any easy assumption to make would be the correlation between involvement of a heritage focused organisation and the variable importance attributed to cultural significance, thus reduced importance of other legislation. However, the MOD break this mould by actively pursuing and managing change of the historic buildings to ensure continued longevity, relevance and suitable use within the organisation- thus suggesting that an increased presence or contribution by heritage focused organisations to non-heritage organisations would improve the status and hierarchy of cultural significance. This argument could be further explored through a series of case studies utilising organisations with the primary income generated in the same sector in order to fully qualify the reasons for corporate decisions. However, this may be an impossible task within the corporate sector of the UK due to the predominance of large conglomerate organisations. From the case studies, it would seem that the scale of the organisation rules whether maintenance work is executed by in-house staff or tendered to external contractors. Both the MOD and Network Rail cited a too heavy current workload to utilise in-house staff, and a need for a more detailed knowledge of historic fabrics and techniques than is available within the organisation. Although the use of external consultants is not a complete surprise with the diversity and wealth of historic buildings owned by both of the afore mentioned organisations, there is however a lack of detailed information within management documents regarding the presentation of information to external contractors regarding the organisations’ position towards the historic environment and conservation policies. The focus seems to primarily fall on allocating work to contractors with cost-effective and cost- Chapter Eight - Maintenance in practice Eight•Six Facilitating maintenance Aimee Felton