The primary activities of conservators are defined as intelligent technical actions which have endpoints determined by: a curator or owner; the context of the object in history or other academic discipline; the conservator's Code of Ethics. Organisation of a conservation activity should maximise in an economical manner the intellectual content of practical work. Any conservation facility (workshop, laboratory) falls somewhere in a series ranging from workshop to research laboratory. Each member of the series lays greater emphasis on some rather than other of the six Murray Pease procedures for the treatment of objects. The practical functioning of each of these six procedures is discussed in detail, showing, as appropriate, its particular importance: in protecting the object; in developing the understanding of the conservator; inintegrating his/her particular skills and responsibilities with the employing Institution's responsibilities and generalised competences; in determining the physical lay-out and staff-structure of a workshop/laboratory. The final report is considered: how it comes into being, the value of various sources of information that inform it, methods of retrieving it. Five pages described selection of scientific disciplines in support and how the work of scientists can be integrated into such conservation activity.