Quantity surveyor

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A quantity surveyor (QS) is a professional working within the construction industry concerned with construction costs and contracts. The services provided by the quantity surveyor includes:

  • Cost planning and commercial management during the entire life cycle of the project from inception to completion
  • Value engineering
  • Risk Management
  • Procurement advice and assistance during the tendering procedures
  • Commercial Management and Contract Administration
  • Assistance in dispute resolution
  • Asset Capitalisation

Contents

History [edit]

Prior to the Napoleonic Wars, Britain, in common with its conti nental neighbours, had a construction industry based on separate trades. This system still exists in France as ‘lots sépare’, and variations of it can be found throughout Europe, including in Germany.The system works like this:

instead of the multi-traded main contractor that operates in the UK, each trade is tendered for, and subsequently engaged separately under, the coordination of a project manager. The Napoleonic Wars, however, brought change and nowhere more so than in Britain – the only large European state that Napoleon failed to invade or occupy. The government of the day was obliged to construct barracks to house the huge garrisons of soldiers who were then being transported across the English Channel. As the need for the army barracks was so urgent and the time to prepare drawings, specifications, etc. was so short, the contracts were let on a ‘settlement by fair valuation based on measurement after completion of the works’. This meant that constructors were given the opportunity and encouragement to innovate and to problem solve – something that was progressively withdrawn from them in the years that followed. The same need for haste, coupled with the sheer magnitude of the individual projects, led to many contracts being let to a single builder or group of tradesmen ‘contracting in gross’, and the general contractor was born. When peace was made the Office of Works and Public Buildings, which had been increasingly concerned with the high cost of measurement and fair value procurement – in particular, in the construction of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle – decided that enough was enough. In 1828 separate trades contracting was discontinued for public works in England in favour of contracting in gross. The following years saw contracting in gross (general contracting) rise to dominate, and with this development the role of the builder as an innovator, problem-solver and design team member was stifl ed to the point where contractors operating in the UK system were reduced to simple executors of the works and instructions (although in Scotland the separate trades system survived until the early 1970s). Then in 1834 architects decided that they wished to divorce themselves from surveyors and establish the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), exclusively for architects. The grounds for this great schism were that architects wished to distance themselves from surveyors and their perceived ‘obnoxious commercial interest in construction’. The events of 1834 were also responsible for the birth of another UK phenomenon, the quantity surveyor. For the next 150 or so years the UK construction industry continued to develop along the lines outlined above, and consequently by the third quarter of the twentieth century the industry was characterised by:

  • Powerful professions carrying out work on comparatively generous fee scales
  • Contractors devoid of the capability to analyse and refine design solutions
  • Forms of contract that made the industry one of the most litigious in Europe, and
  • Procurement systems based upon competition and selection by lowest price rather than value for money

Some within the industry had serious concerns about procurement routes and documentation, the forms of contract in use leading to excess costs, suboptimal building quality and time delays, and the adversarial and conflict-ridden relationships between the various parties. A series of government-sponsored reports (Simon, 1944; Emmerson, 1962; Banwell, 1964) attempted to stimulate debate about construction industry practice, but with little effect. It was not just the UK construction industry that was obsessed with navel-gazing during the last quarter of the twentieth century; quantity surveyors had also been busy penning numerous reports into the future prospects for their profession, all produced either directly by, or on behalf of, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The most notable of which were:

  • The Future Role of the Quantity Surveyor (RICS, 1971) was the product of a questionnaire sent to all firms in private practice together with a limited number of public sector organisations. The report paints a picture of a world where the quantity surveyor was primarily a producer of bills of quantities; indeed, the report comes to the conclusion that the distinct competence of the quantity surveyor of the 1970s was measurement – a view, it should be added, still shared by many today. In addition, competitive single stage tendering was the norm, as was the practice of receiving most work via the patron age of an architect. It was a profession where design and construct projects were rare, and quantity surveyors were discouraged from forming multidisciplinary practices and encouraged to adhere to the scale of fees charges. The report observes that clients were becoming more informed, but there was little advice about how quantity surveyors

were to meet this challenge

  • The Challenge for Change: QS Think Tank (RICS, 1998). A mere 25 years after the original report, the 1998 report was drafted in a business climate driven by information technology, where quantities generation is a low-cost activity and the client base is demanding that surveyors demonstrate added value. In particular,

medium-sized quantity surveying firms (i.e. between 10 and 250 employees) were singled out by this latest report to be under particular pressure owing to:

o competing with large practices’ multiple disciplines and greater specialist knowledge base o attracting and retaining a high-quality workforce o achieving a return on the necessary investment in IT, and o competing with the small firms with low overheads.

The profession [edit]

A quantity surveyor may choose to work in any number of different fields. However, principally these can be divided into:

  • Private practice, often referred now to as project management, and
  • Commercial management or contracting surveying.

Private practice [edit]

The conventional model for quantity surveying firms in private practice is to trade as a sole practitioner or as a partnership. A surveyor who is a partner in a partnership is jointly and severally liable for all debts and liabilities of the partnership and liable to the full extent of their personal wealth for the debts of the business. However, in 2001 the Limited Liability Partnership Act made limited liability partnerships (LLPs) available to any ‘two or more persons associated for carrying on a lawful business with a view to profit’. This followed on from the RICS’s decision in 1986 to remove the restrictions on limited liability. The arguments for the introduction of LLPs are:

  • The general partnership, which had existed since the Partnership Act of 1890, was no longer an appropriate vehicle for modern firms and for their businesses
  • Unlike a partnership, an LLP is a separate legal entity. Although some LLPs call their members ‘partners’, they are not partners in a partnership; their legal title is ‘members of an LLP’
  • The primary purpose of an LLP is to provide additional protection for the members through limited liability; a member will not be personally liable for acts and defaults of a fellow member. However, he or she may still be personally liable for his or her own negligence.

Commercial management [edit]

Commercial management is generally meant to be managing the contractual and commercial aspects of projects for the supply side of the industry. Many commercial managers are members of the CIOB and the RICS.


General [edit]

The name quantity surveyor conjures up a variety of different images in people’s imaginations. For some, the term quantity surveyor is an outmoded title from the past. It certainly no longer accurately describes the duties that are performed. When the term was first applied to the profession, the work of the Q.S. was vastly different to that now being carried out and anticipated in the twenty-first century.

Construction sectors [edit]

  • Within the construction industry Quantity surveyors are involved in the following four main areas of work:-

Building work [edit]

  • The employment of the Q.S. on building projects today is well established. Q.S. are the cost and value experts of the construction industry. Their responsibilities include advising clients on the cost and value implication of design decisions and the controlling of construction costs.

Building engineering services [edit]

  • It involves the engineering services of the building like air-conditioning, electrical, lift services and others where prime cost sums are to be included in the bills of quantities. It needs a clear preference for a systematic breakdown of costs that can be properly compared and evaluated. The building services engineering work is frequently more extensive and expensive and its costs, value and cost control must be rigorous.

Civil engineering [edit]

  • Civil engineering projects use different methods of measurement. It is known as the Civil Engineering Standard Method of Measurement or CESMM. Different forms and conditions of contract are also used. The work is more method related than building works, with a much more intensive use of mechanical plants and temporary works.


Heavy and industrial engineering [edit]

  • This work includes such areas as onshore and offshore oil and gas, petro-chemicals, nuclear reprocessing and production facilities. The work involved is generally classified as cost engineering. The professional cost engineer is widely employed in the USA and in many countries in Europe. For this industries they are using Standard Method of Measurement for Industrial Engineering Construction. The basic methods of measurement are similar to those used in other Q.S .work.

Traditional quantity surveying services [edit]

1. Approximate estimates

2. Cost planning

3. Procurement advice

4. Measurement and quantification

5. Document preparation especially bills of quantities.

6. Cost control during construction

7. Interim valuations and payments.

8. Financial statement

9. Final account preparation.

10. Settlement of contractual claims.


Future services expected [edit]

1. Investment appraisal

2. Advice on cost limits and budgets

3. Whole life cycle costing

4. Value management

5. Risk analysis

6. Insolvency services.

7. Subcontract administration

8. Environmental services measurement and costing.

9. Technical auditing

10. Planning and supervision

11. Valuation for insurance purposes

12. Project management

13. Administering maintenance programmes

14. Advice on contractual disputes.


Professional Duties [edit]

Pre-Contract [edit]

1. Provide estimates

2. Measurement

3. Tenders

4. Tender Reports

Post-Contract [edit]

1. Contract Documents

2. Contract Administration

3. Financial Statement

4. Variations

5. Final Accounts

6. Cost Analysis

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) [edit]

The RICS was founded in 1868 and today there are approximately 130,000 members operating in over 140 countries of which approximately 35,000 are quantity surveyors. The key roles of the RICS are to:

• Regulate and promote the profession • Maintain the highest educational and professional standards • Protect clients and consumers through a strict code of ethics • Provide impartial advice, analysis and guidance.

Training and education [edit]

Until the 1960s the principal route to becoming a quantity surveyor was to follow a course on either a full or part-time basis (some of these courses were really tests of attrition, which involved attending evening classes for three hours a night, four nights a week for several years, and finally sitting the examinations for either the RICS or the Institute of Quantity Surveyors (IQS). These examinations had a fearsome reputation with approximately only 35% of all candidates being successful each year. However, during the 1960s the first Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA) degree and diploma courses in surveying were offered at universities and other institutions of higher education. These granted exemption from the majority of the professional institutes’ examinations. In 1982 the RICS and IQS merged – as a result, the IQS ceased to exist. With the transition from examinations set by the RICS to degrees and diplomas, the RICS’s role changed to one of an accrediting body. In 2001 the RICS radically revised its accreditation process and introduced a ‘Partnership’ scheme for selected universities, etc. The aims of the partnership arrangements are to:

  • Maintain standards
  • Attract the best entrants to the profession
  • Promote research
  • Develop courses in response to the needs of the profession and industry
  • Improve education/professional links.

One of the principal routes to becoming a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is:

  • By obtaining a first degree awarded by an RICS partnership university. In the UK there are a number of higher education establishments that offer 3, or 4 years in the case of Scotland, degree courses
  • On completion of the first degree, the graduate then typically gains employment in a private practice or contractor’s organization with a structured training framework. After a minimum of two years of work experience the candidate applies to take the Assessment of Professional Competence (APC)
  • The purpose of the APC is to ensure that those applying for RICS membership are competent to practice. It is structured to provide a number of pathways to cover nineteen different areas of practice. The APC for quantity surveyors covers a number of mandatory, core and optional competencies such as:

o commercial management of construction or design economics o contract practice o construction technology and environmental services o procurement and tendering o project fi nancial control o quantifi cation and costing of construction studies

  • If successful, the candidate may apply for membership of the RICS (MRICS). Approximately half of all entrants to the surveying profession come via this route. Corporate membership is at two levels; members and fellows. In 2002 RICS raised the standards for its fellowship award to reflect career achievements. Normally only MRICS members with a minimum of five years service who are major achievers will now be considered. in addition to the first degree route, in recent years a number of other routes have become very popular. These are:
  • Cognate and non-cognate degree courses available in full-time, part-time and distance learning modes. These courses are typically 2–3 years in duration and have been developed to attract candidates who already have a fi rst degree in a related (cognate) or unrelated (non-cognate) subject area. These courses are intensive but have proved to be very popular with almost 25% of all entrants to surveying now coming from this route
  • Masters degrees (MSc). There are a number of second degree courses both full-, part-time and distance learning, that are recognised by the RICS for entry to the institution and enrolment to take the APC
  • In addition to the above routes into the profession, the RICS encourages entry from non-traditional routes and many higher education establishments retain a number of places for candidates who do not have any of the above traditional qualifications
  • High National Diplomas and Certificates in a cognate area with passes at a high level are also recognised as an entry qualification

to an RICS first degree course at advanced level.

Tech RICS [edit]

For many years the RICS has been promoting a ‘two tier’ profession, the lower technical tier being provided by technicians or Tech RICS. One of the routes leading to Tech RICS is through the completion of the College of Estate Management’s Diploma in Surveying Practice. Entry to the course is typically:

  • ‘A’ Level at grade C or above in a relevant subject
  • HNC/HND in relevant subjects (merits and distinctions recognised

in the fi nal award)

  • A relevant professional qualifi cation or at least 10 years’ relevant experience in the property and construction profession with evidence of 5 years’ appropriate structured learning (Level 1 module exemption only).
  • Tech RICS can be a route to full corporate membership of the RICS.

Continuing professional development and lifelong learning [edit]

Since 1984 continuing professional development (CPD) has been mandatory for all corporate members and is a process by which practicing surveyors can keep pace with the latest professional standards and practices whilst monitoring current levels of knowledge.

CPD can be grouped into four main categories:

  • Professional work-based activities
  • Personal activities outside work
  • Courses, seminars and conferences, and
  • Self-directed and informal learning.

Lifelong learning is defi ned as: ‘a learning activity undertaken through life with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence within a personal and/or employer-related perspective. It is seen as a key element of CPD and an important tool in maintaining a person’s employability in a rapidly changing business environment.’

External links [edit]

References [edit]

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