Is Quantity Surveying a Good Career?

  Hi Everyone, Welcome to "The Civil Engineer", in this article I am going to share with you the career option of Quantity Surveyor(QS), in some regions of the world they may be known as Costing Engineer, etc.,. If you have any doubt regarding this please feel free to tell us in the comment below we are happy to clear it out. The Quantity Surveyor is the "Jack of all Trades" in the construction Industry.

  Let me explain it. If you are a QS you will start your career with quantity takeoff either in the site office if you are posted in the site or in the Head office if you are posted in the head office. For those who are thinking about whether it's an office job or on-site, it's an office job. But Occasional site inspection will be needed.

 In the quantity take-off phase, you need to have the ability to read the drawings (i.e. Autocad drawings) like Floor plans, Structural Drawings, etc if you want me to say technically the GFC (Good for Construction) drawing for the construction. Also in this phase, you need to have or develop the ability to see or imagine how the building will be in 3D view since most of the time you will be provided with a 2D view of Buildings in the CAD file. So imagineering is very important when it comes to QS. You are part of the Design and Drawing team hence you need to have a limited knowledge of Design and Drawing for efficient work.

  The next step once you master quantity surveying from the GFC, is the material and labor calculation. As a QS it is your responsibility to calculate how much quantity of material needs to be purchased to finish the project. You may have a question the the Site engineers were the people who were executing the work so they needed to work on material and labor calculation. Yes, it's true, but here is the catch. Site Engineers only calculate the material and labor that is needed for that day or a week's material and labor not the full project. QS takes a far ahead in this by projecting the material that is needed for the total completion of the project. Hence in this part, you are like to have and behave like Project Managers in Planning.

    The next step is the Rate fixing for the material and labor that we have arrived at. Once it is done the material and labor part change into money i.e. budget of the project. So you need to have the knowledge of a purchase manager for rates and a project manager who deals with the labor.

    Once it is done, the tracking of the Material, Labor, and Expenses whether they are within the limit that we have fixed. Hence here you act as a CFO( Chief financial officer) of the project.

    So as you see above, a QS job involves the knowledge of a Design and planning Engineer, Project Manager, Purchase manager, and financial officer. Hence he/she needs to be versatile in all these fields. Hence he is the "Jack of all trades" in the construction industry.

    From the above you see the versatile character of this job makes them unique in the construction industry hence there will be always scope for this job until the volume of construction is greater. QS was the bridge and control center between the Project Site and the Head office of a construction business,

    If you are really interested in QS then you need to be familiar with some software that we have discussed clearly in an article titled " What is the software that a Quantity Surveyor (QS) needs to be familiar "