Construction Quantity Surveyors

As you progress in your career as a Quantity Surveyor, there will be opportunities to specialise, perhaps in the type of projects you work on or the type of support you are able to offer. Some Quantity Surveyors, for instance, offer specialist support on property taxes, project funding, or sustainability. #QuantitySurveyor #Construction #ConstructionCareers #CareerDevelopment

Broadly speaking, there are two types of Quantity Surveyor roles - working for either the contractor or for the client directly. The Contractor's Quantity Surveyor will typically spend more time onsite, managing sub-contractors and any specialists. While site visits will be required for valuations and meetings, the client's Quantity Surveyor will be focussed on budget estimations and working alongside professionals such as engineers and architects to prepare tender documents.

According to the Office for National Statistics, women now make up a higher proportion of the construction workforce than at any time since official records began. 🔹 The construction workforce was 15.8% female in April to June 2023, up 1.2% from the previous quarter 🔹 Before the pandemic, this figure stood at 12.6% According to RICS - which welcomed its first female RICS-qualified surveyor, Irene Barclay, back in 1922 - more and more women are qualifying into the surveying profession. However, the proportion of women is still low. In February 2022, women represented only 18% of RICS' then 139,000 international professionals, across 23 pathways, including quantity surveying. Irene Barclay was a trailblazer and was in practice for 50 years. Regarded as one of the key social reformers of the 20th century, her work improving housing conditions in the slums of St Pancras saw her receiving an OBE in 1966. RICS explains that there has been a continued focus on the increased engagement of young women coming into surveying. This has been achieved through a number of channels, including ensuring marketing materials have greater female visibility. The organisation states: "Creating greater visibility of exceptional is core to our aims; we want to see a diverse workforce and showcase those exceptional women who demonstrate that careers in the built and natural environment are, and should be, accessible to all." #WomenInConstruction #QuantitySurveying #QuantitySurveyor

Do you think that the Quantity Surveyor role is a fairly modern one? It can be easy to think so, but if you were to travel back to ancient Egypt, at the time of building the pyramids and temples, you'd find people working roles very similar to what we know today as Quantity Surveyors. It's a timeless job function. Even the bible includes a passing reference to a Quantity Surveyor: Luke, 14:28, "For which of you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first and counts the cost to see whether he will have sufficient to finish it?" Arguably, it was the Great Fire of London which led to the creation of quantity surveying as the profession we recognise today. As London needed to be reconstructed, Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, and Robert Hooke were tasked with overseeing one of the biggest building projects ever undertaken. This project was so vast that it was decided that craftsmen should be paid for the quantity of work completed. To establish this, a person was needed to look at drawings and to measure what each trade should be required to do to complete the construction, then providing an estimate. And this person was later to become the Quantity Surveyor we know today. Today, the technology used by Quantity Surveyors would be unrecognisable by those who met together in 1868, or, indeed, were accessing what raw materials were needed to build the great pyramids. But, the key role in construction which Quantity Surveyors has not changed.