The Role of the Quantity Surveying Profession within the contemporary Built Environment

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The Role of the Quantity Surveying Profession within the contemporary Built Environment

Built Environment

Before discussing the role of the quantity surveyor, it’s very important to get an idea about the built environment where the quantity surveyor works. Simply the built environment means human made buildings, cities, roads and surroundings etc.. that could provide an environment for their activities. The concept of the built environment was introduced in Greece in many centuries ago in the process of developing their cities using grid plans. But the modern concept of built environment is far more complex than that. Considering the contemporary built environment, with huge increase of the population in the world over the last century human desires are risen up and became more complicated. Similarly necessity to have houses, cities, roads, which is called built environment, has become compulsive aspect of human life. Since the Quantity Surveyor is a significant character of constructing that built environment, he/she has to play a vital role in it.

The Origin of the Quantity Surveying

What is the quantity surveying?  According to the Seeley (1997), Quantity Surveying is a profession which would prepare an accurate bill of quantities to be priced by tendering contractors and who would measure and value any variations that might occur during the progress of the works. But when considering the history of this profession, the origin of quantity surveying carries us way back to the 17th century. In 1666 after the Great Fire, London was under restoration process it needed huge no. of workers like masons, carpenters and other tradesmen. Before the 1666 all the workers mentioned above got paid daily basis. But the large amount of labor needed to restore the city after the fire, it made governors to think twice and decided to pay each worker for the quantity of work they had done. It meant on behalf of the salary workers had been paid for the amount of carpentry, masonry and other works they had done. Therefore one person had to read the drawings of the buildings and take off the quantity of work each and every trade in the construction and at the same time he had to prepare an estimate for the total cost. And the Quantity Surveying profession was evolved to the current status after that incidence.

History of the Quantity Surveying

In early 70’s there was a misunderstanding about the profession that believing the “valuation” and the “measurement” are covering the whole area of quantity surveying. Therefore quantity surveying profession was highlighted only for its “Technical” role throughout that period. But measurement and valuation are only two functions performed by quantity surveyors.  Because of this nature, many people believed that the functions done by the quantity surveyor can be undertaken by any person or machine that can perform arithmetic calculations, like a  computer.

“The QS is not a necessity in the order of things. Any convenient and cheap method of multiplying drawings and specifications and placing copies in the hands of each estimator would answer the same purpose and get rid of the QS for good” (Anon, 1889 cited in Wood, 2008).

Changing roles of Quantity Surveying

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Despite all the above doubts quantity surveying profession was survived and presently regarded as one of the most expensive profession in the construction industry. Also quantity surveying is being known as a dynamic profession and its skills section had gone for different changes over the last decade or so. Smith (2004) mentioned that the quantity surveying profession has faced to considerable changes over the last decade in terms of scope and the type of contributions provided within and outside the construction process. Ashworth (1981) pointed out the changing role of the quantity surveyor in recent past has been significant.

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