FUTURE THINKING
SAMUEL STAR FAIQS, CQS Principal, Archi-QS
It is with pride that I now see our profession emerging as a key player in the industry. As a quantity surveyor, we see the bigger picture when it comes to what it takes to construct, maintain, and evolve a built environment many years after post-occupancy. Very few professions are privileged to say this. As such, I have always believed that we were underutilised. Underutilised for our in-depth knowledge of project feasibility, procurement frameworks and contracts, construction methodology, and how buildings fair over time. When I first started my career, the quantity surveyor was little known, and far and few to come by. We had one or two predominant roles: estimating costs for builders during tender and preparation of bills of quantities. I remember spending long nights calculating bills of quantities manually. It was tedious, high pressure, time consuming; but laid the foundations needed to evolve my firm with the forever changing industry trends. The Building Commissioner’s changes to legislation of late, (such as asset management plans for retirement villages, and the Stata Building Bond and Inspection Scheme, among others), has opened new doors for the quantity surveyor. I see this paving the way for future generations to grow the profession. Perhaps, we will become widely recognised for the added value we offer: ensuring projects are procured for success, ensuring construction is carried out with high quality standards, and ensuring that the maintenance of our built environment is advocated for.
CHRISTOPHER LEACH FAIQS, CQS Director, Wilde and Woollard
Quantity surveying is a profession that is a uniquely British construct and is prevalent throughout the Commonwealth and to a limited extent beyond. The rest of the world manages quite adequately without the services of a quantity surveyor; quantities are prepared, estimates are undertaken, and things get built. It is important to remember that nothing is ‘ordained’ about quantity surveyors being the ‘pre-eminent’ costing profession. We must work hard to stay ahead of the others who claim expertise in the costing field. So, in order to talk about the future, we need to clearly define what we actually do. In the simplest term, our ‘core’ service is to provide professional advice, typically as either quantities and/or costs associated with the built environment. This is something we have been doing in Australia as a profession since the 1850s, so while the outputs over time have remained fairly constant, how we go about achieving those outputs has dramatically changed as we have adapted to the technology of the time. While it could be argued the technological changes, we are currently seeing are far more radical than earlier times, we as humans tend to anticipate future change having a greater impact than changes in the past. Imagine what the impact of calculators would have been when arithmetical calculations were undertaken by pen, paper, and brain power.
06 : JUNE - AUGUST 2022: BUILT ENVIRONMENT ECONOMIST
Going forward it is important to remember technology is just a tool, it is there to help us augment our outcomes and not the other way round. While our strengths are our analytical skills, our major weakness is we are too ready to accept what technology produces as being correct even when it is clearly not. Arguing with the client that the multiple tenderers are wrong, and our computer model is correct does not cut it. Even spreadsheets which have given us almost endless ways to manipulate data have also provided endless ways we can get things wrong. While there will always be technological impacts on quantity surveying, I think the biggest challenge to our future will be attracting good people to the profession. Our biggest strength has always been our people and a keystone of that has been the reliance upon professional migrants to fill our ranks. Smart people from overseas with ‘get up and go’ has always driven our profession. For the profession to thrive we must continue to attract smart people, both locally and from overseas. This has become a major challenge over recent time and does not appear to be improving especially given there are so many other opportunities for smart people both in Australia and abroad. Although there will be both challenges and opportunities for the future, as long as we have the right people, we as a profession will meet those challenges head on, as we have over the last century and a half. However, if we cannot attract the right people then as the Super Funds ads so aptly state ‘… past performance is no guarantee of future performance…...’
