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Quantity surveying is an essential component in any construction development worldwide and offers services across various industries. The QS profession is required from the inception stage of construction and is extended throughout the end of building life. The scope of work is different in every stage of a construction project, typically to give advice on financial and contract administration aspects.
Over the course of the last few decades, the role of a Quantity Surveyor has evolved thanks to varied factors like the various economic developments, countless studies, and technological growth.
When these factors were analysed, the results showed that the development trends in the building economics that happened at the end of the twentieth century had significantly impacted and shifted the role of quantity surveying.
In this article, we will review quantity surveyors’ roles and responsibilities in different job sectors, focusing on banking and oil & gas:
QS Profession in Oil and Gas
The oil and gas industry continues to play a significant role in the economic development of Middle East. A great number of projects are expected to create many employment opportunities in the oil and gas sector including for QS profession.
The activities in the petroleum sector can be divided into upstream
and downstream; upstream activities are efforts of exploration and production while the downstream activities are refining, marketing, and distributing the petroleum.
However, the roles in the petroleum sector can be divided into technical and commercial; technical roles include geosciences, health, safety and environment, quality management, project management, and engineering, whereas commercial roles comprise of finance and accounting, cost engineering and estimating, business planning and development, marketing and training, contracting and commercial, legal, procurement, human resource, administration, information technology, and supply distribution.
QS Profession in Banking
Financial institutions are deemed important in the development of the region as a huge capital is required to start the development. Some important roles of banks in the development of the region are promoting people’s saving habits, offering capital and promoting industries, facilitating trade and commerce functions, generating employment
opportunities and supporting the development in various sectors.
Some banks hire quantity surveyors to deliver their professional services but the small number of them in this sector make it difficult to retrieve the statistic. In future, there are prospects for quantity surveyors to secure jobs in insurance or other finance positions in banks, or as corporate finance officers. Generally, the construction industry will work closely with banks for housing loans, developer or project loans and technical appraisal. Thus, the roles of quantity surveyors in financial institutions
are to assess the technical appraisals from the followings: construction stakeholders who need the capital, developers who want to develop a new project, contractors who want to bid for a new project, suppliers who want to produce a new material and individuals who want to buy a house or other properties, etc.
In conclusion, the profession of quantity surveying is no longer restricted to the old-style roles and responsibilities in the construction industry. The profession evolves over time with the integration of more enhanced skills and competencies to ensure the readiness of quantity surveyors to survive in recent multi-disciplinary sophisticated businesses. More prospects outside the construction industry are explored leading to other lucrative industries like oil & gas, and banking. For oil and gas, Quantity Surveyors basic roles and responsibilities are similar as these sectors are still in the construction parameters. However, quantity surveyors’ roles and responsibilities are quite different in banking sector due to the different nature of work. For oil and gas, quantity surveyors are responsible mainly for procurement management. For banking sector, the roles are rather different as quantity surveyors are required to assess technical appraisals submitted by developers who seek capital to bear the cost of their projects.