just another bill to pay?
Building a home will save you money in the long run, but the initial costs can sometimes cause one to want to cut corners and ‘manage everything in-house’. The fact of the matter is that whilst bricklaying may be a trade that most people could master, there is far more involved in building a house than just the brickwork…. professionals and consultants who have degrees with many letters after their names are essential to the long-term investment in your home. Quantity Surveyors (QS’s) are one such group of experts. If they do their job, not only will they save you money in the long run, they’ll also help you save throughout the building process.
The QS’s main responsibility, as an industry professional, is to enable the client or contractor to estimate accurately the value of construction works. In some spheres they are also known as cost planners. As their title suggests, their role is to quantify the myriad of resources that go into a construction project, including labour, materials and supervision.
Regardless of the size of a project, whether a renovation or a brand new house, QS’s play a vital part in ensuring that you have the right costings in hand to do the job well and cost-effectively. It’s not only in the planning stages that they can help, as we said, they can help in effectual cost management throughout the building process. Here’s a list of tasks that one could expect of a QS in a typical construction project (from Wikipedia):
- The QS's traditional independent role on the team comprising client, architect, engineers and contractor has given him a reputation and appreciation for fairness. This, combined with his expertise in drafting and interpretation of contract documents, enables him to settle issues, value the works fairly and regularly, project final costs, avoid disputes and ensure the effective progress of a project.
- QS control construction costs by accurate measurement of the work required on a regular basis, the application of expert knowledge of costs and prices of work, labour, materials and plant required, an understanding of the implications of design decisions at an early stage to ensure that good value is obtained for the money to be expended.
- The technique of measuring quantities from drawings, sketches and specifications prepared by designers, principally architects and engineers, in order to prepare tender/contract documents, is known in the industry as taking off. The quantities of work taken off typically are used to prepare bills of quantities (BoQ), which usually are prepared in accordance with a published Standard Method of Measurement (SMM) as agreed to by the QS profession and representatives of the construction industry. This activity is usually completed before the commencement of work on site on a traditional (BoQ) project, the contractor will then price this document in competitive tender and be paid according to a measure undertaken on site and applied to each specific work item.
If you’d like to know who we’ve dealt with in the past or would like some more information regarding bills of quantity or financial planning, please give us a shout!
