QS fees rise 6% this decade, but trail PM rates

Quantity surveyors’ fees are going up, with private housing work paying QSs better than any other sector, a report has found. After stripping out the effects of building cost inflation, average fees have increased by 6% in real terms since 2000. The real rise in the last year is 1%, according to the findings from research firm Mirza & Nacey.

Hourly fees - charge-out rates - have increased by 55% in the last five years. The average rate charged by principals and partners has grown from £50 an hour in 1999 to £75 in 2005. Surveyors have upped their rates from £25 to £42 over the same period.

Average fees charged for private housing work have increased the most in the past five years - up by 19%. Public sector work is 5% higher but commercial work has seen average fees fall by 6% over the period. Aziz Mirza, author of the report, put this down to demand trends.

The report also claimed that project management generally pays better than QSing. Principals charge a premium of 10% for PM duties - in other words £70 an hour for PM work compared to £65 for QSing.

Meanwhile, senior surveyors charge £55 compared with £50. But sole principals were found to charge less for PM, at £50 compared with £55.

One QSs questioned the findings. Paul Brownsword, partner at Gleeds, said: “But there are certainly a lot of cutthroat QS contracts about, especially where I am based in the West Midlands. Project management is not necessarily more lucrative than QSing. It depends on the job, the scope of a PM contract can be very varied.”

The survey further found that QSs got higher fees from JCT contracts than from design & build contracts. For a £1m new build job the average QS fee is 2.4% if a JCT contract is used, compared to 2.1 with a design & build contract, it said.

Brownsword said that JCT contracts needed more work: “There is a lot more resource required to service a traditional contract, particularly administering the contract once it's on site and agreeing the final account.“

The survey also found that the higher the project value, the lower the QS's fee, as a percentage of project value. On a £250,000 job the average QS fee with a JCT contract was 2.8%, compared to 1.9% on a £5m JCT job.

The survey is conducted every six months with 200 QSs. The full report, Quantity Surveyors’ Fees 2006, is available at www.fees.uk.net.