The Emperor’s new clothes

Quantity surveying is, has been and will ever be a changing profession, and this is essential if we are to survive and prosper. However, we should sort out the positive from the negative changes and correct the impressions that all is new, shiny and original in concept.

The three main changes over the last 30 years to affect the QS profession and those working in the industry have been:

• Metrication in 1972 (who remembers duo decimals and being unable to use a calculator to do the maths now?)
• IT, with the appearance and growth of personal computers making it possible for the smaller practices to rival the output and style of the larger multi-partner practices
• Communication, from faxes, mobile phones, inter and extranets to broadband and PDAs and so on.

Many other changes are in reality tantamount to the Emperor’s new clothes.

In the 1970s the profession had identified many relevant core skills for a QS: costs in use, building economics and cost planning as well as the need for industry standards. Various SMMs followed with standard contracts issued by the JCT and others with a standard phraseology launched across the industry’s consenting adults.

The basic skill of the QS profession, which has been used to good effect in the past and is still in much demand, is the ability to inform the client, who wishes to know for a new development:

• what it will cost
• how it should be procured.

By working with him or her, the QS can achieve a quality job, on time and to budget.

Most other skills, which have been seen more recently as added value items to sell separately for additional fees, are essential in the achievement of those aims and were nearly always used in reality (risk management, cost planning, life cycle costs, value engineering and so on).

The way these skills are used, however, and with whom, has changed over the years, usually caused by some government initiative to demonstrate “value for money” and ensure “improved supply chains” and constant improvement by shared experience KPIs and “partnerships”.

The changes to ensure value for money in the public sector destroyed many well oiled supply chains and “virtual” partnerships which had been providing good value silently for years and providing a stable environment for practices to grow and develop their skills. This industry is a people business and the successful companies have been working with their “partners” for years.

Many changes made by the RICS since the 1970s, such as the opportunity for members to work in a professional office or with a contractor or in industry, have improved the way our skills can be used for the benefit of the built environment and significantly widened our career opportunities.

But by pursuing some changes in the education of a QS at our universities and not concentrating sufficiently on training in the core skills the profession is placing its younger members in a less sustainable position.

Who will come to a QS in a professional practice to obtain advice on a project if the base information on which the budget is set is not with them but with the contractor’s QS? This is a danger when less and less B of Qs are being produced and tendered upon. Basic methods for cost planning need detailed intelligence and the knowledge to manipulate it correctly.

For those RICS QS members who are afraid of, or find it hard to study to, the current modest levels of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), all I can say is if you don’t keep up to date you won’t be able to earn a crust. You are only as good as your last job.

Evolution of the profession in a moving market place is a given and we need to adapt to take our part in it. But please let us not just reinvent the wheel with fancy new names so that we can bill our clients separately for them.

Robin Hayward is managing director of Hayward Associates (Cumbria)