Quantity surveyor

Encyclopedia : Q : QU : QUA : Quantity surveyor

A quantity surveyor is a professional person associated with the construction industry.

There are two distinct types of Quantity Surveyor:

a) Quantity Surveyors who are carrying out work on behalf of a client organisation often known as a PQS [Practising QS]

b) Quantity Surveyors who work for construction companies sometimes known as Contractors QS's

Although both types of QS would have followed the same course of learning their roles within their respective organsiations are quite different.

The PQS

The functions of the Quantity Surveyor are broadly concerned with the control of cost on construction projects, however this covers a range of activities which may include cost planning, value engineering, feasibility studies, cost benefit analysis, lifecycle costing, valuation, and cost estimation.

Some senior quantity surveyors are known as construction economists, cost engineers or construction managers. A predecessor was known as a "measurer", one who had been a tradesman (probably a guild member) and who had been paid according work performed (piece-work) and who had decided to specialize in the measurement of work with which he was familiar.

The professional institution with which most English-speaking Quantity Surveyors are affiliated is the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Quantity surveyors control construction costs by accurate measurement of the work required, the application of expert knowledge of costs and prices of work, labour, materials and plant required, an understanding of the implications of design decisions at an early stage to ensure that good value is obtained for the money to be expended.

The technique of measuring quantities from drawings and specifications prepared by designers, principally architects and engineers, in order to prepare Tender/Contract Documents, is known in the industry as taking off. The quantities of work taken off typically are used to prepare bills of quantities, which usually are prepared in accordance with a published standard method of measurement as agreed to by the QS profession and representatives of the construction industry.

The Contractors QS

The Contractors QS is responsible for all legal and commercial matters within the contracting organisation - in fact their commercial leaning has meant that in many organisation they are now termed commercial managers rather than QS's

Pop Culture

This fairly obscure profession is familiar to some who would otherwise not have heard of it because it was one of the punchlines in the Monty Python 'bookshop sketch': the shopowner locates a book entitled Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying.

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