Career in Quantity Surveying

Career in Quantity Surveying Quantity surveyors come in two flavors. There is the PQS, Private Quantity Surveyor, who works in professional practice and the CQS or Contractor’s Quantity Surveyor, who works for a building contractor. The Quantity Surveyor   is responsible for all the financial, contractual and legal aspects of a construction project.   The PQS will provide cost planning advice during the design stage of a project and then monitor the actual costs against the budgets whilst the project is being built.   Building contractors are often paid monthly in instalments on large projects and it is the quantity surveyors job to determine a fair valuation for the work that has been completed.   In addition the PQS will advise the client on a suitable form of building contract. The Contractor’s Quantity Surveyor will be involved in pricing work that a contractor is asked to tender for, letting packages of work to specialist subcontractors and valuing and paying for subcontractor’ s work. In the same way that the PQS provides cost planning advice to the client the CQS provides financial advice to the building contractor. If you think you are more skilled with figures than floor plans then you might think about becoming a quantity surveyor the so called economist of the construction industry.   As a student quantity surveyor, Ruth Smart worked on the McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield calculating the construction costs.   Listen to what she has to say about her work by clicking on her link.   Hit Back on your browser to return to this page. If you think you are more skilled with figures than floor plans then you might think about becoming a quantity surveyor the so called economist of the construction industry. As a student quantity surveyor Ruth Smart worked on McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield calculating the construction costs. The major one of this stadium was all of these they are called banana trusses because they are shaped like bananas. The steel wo rk that went into this stadium was very expensive. There is a lot concrete in this building as you can see all the seats. The whole structure is concrete. The seats are put on top of concrete. Steps, huge, huge money. The nicer bits are thing like you know the actual pitch, and the lights all these extras that you don’t think of which need to be priced. The line markings, everything we have to take into account everything, signage, big project. I studied quantity surveying at Leeds and years 1 and 2 was spent in the college learning, year 3 was spent on site at McAlpine Stadium and year 4 was my final year again spent in College. It wasn’t just text book stuff it was things like learning to build a brick wall. What construction was about the actual physical building of buildings. Surveyors who have been educated in Britain are viewed very well overseas. Two months after I graduated I started work out in Johannesburg, South Africa. Which was fantastic lots of exposure. Thrown in at the deep end was great running my own jobs.