A quantity surveyor (QS) is a construction industry professional with expert knowledge on construction costs and contracts. Qualified professional quantity surveyors are known as Chartered Surveyors (Members and Fellows of RICS) in the UK and Certified Quantity Surveyors (a designation of AIQS) in Australia and other countries. In some countries such as Canada, South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius, qualified quantity surveyors are known as Professional Quantity Surveyors, a title protected by law.
Quantity surveyors are responsible for managing all aspects of the contractual and financial side of construction projects. They help to ensure that the construction project is completed within its projected budget. Quantity surveyors are also hired by contractors to help with the valuation of construction work for the contractor, help with bidding and project budgeting, and the submission of bills to the client.
The duties of a quantity surveyor are as follows:
Cost estimate, cost planning and cost management
Analyzing terms and conditions in the contract.
Predicting potential risks in the project and taking precautions to mitigate such.
Forecasting the costs of different materials needed for the project.
Prepare tender documents, contracts, budgets and other documentation.
Take note of changes made and adjusting the budget accordingly.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
A general contractor, main contractor, prime contractor, builder (UK/AUS), or contractor (US and Asia) is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the course of a building project. In the USA a builder may be a sole proprietor managing a project and performing labor or carpentry work, have a small staff, or may be a very large company managing billion dollar projects.