Quantity Surveying
A Quantity Surveyor is a construction industry professional with expert knowledge on construction costs and contracts.
What is Quantity Surveying?
As a quantity surveyor, you’ll seek to minimise the cost and risk of a construction project and enhance value for money, while still achieving the required legal standards and quality. This includes ensuring statutory building regulations are met.
You’ll prepare estimates and costs of the work and when the project is in progress, you’ll keep track of any variations to the contract that may affect costs and create reports to show profitability.
Working either for the client or the contractor, in an office or on site, you’ll be involved in every stage of a project. Projects include commercial, industrial and residential constructions.
Alternative job titles include construction cost consultant, cost manager and commercial manager.
Why Consider Quantity Surveying?
One reason why quantity surveying is an exciting career path is the strategic aspect of the work. The position not only focuses on measuring up the site and working out an approximate price for the project but also incorporates strategic methods to make it cheaper for the client. Strategic planning includes preparing tenders, designing an efficient economic plan and developing a method of building that ensures high quality of all work performed on the site.
Project diversity is another reason why quantity surveying is an exciting career path. No two projects are identical, which means that the quality surveyor will face new challenges when measuring sites and calculating project costs for clients. If the surveyor is working as an independent contractor, the employees working below him on the job site will also change with each project, bringing in a new level of diversity.
Fields of Quantity Surveying
Cost planning is a management process that seeks to control design. development in line with the client’s budget. It does this by helping the. client decide how it wants to allocate the budget to the various parts of. the project.
Site surveys are inspections of an area where work is proposed, to gather information for a design or an estimate to complete the initial tasks required for an outdoor activity. It can determine a precise location, access, best orientation for the site and the location of obstacles.
Construction law is a branch of law that deals with matters relating to building construction, engineering, and related fields. It is in essence an amalgam of contract law, commercial law, planning law, employment law and tort.
