RICS professional education and training for quantity surveyors and the extent to which it is relevant in the current UK built environment market

Quantity surveying is a profession that plays a major role in the administration and financial management of construction contracts in the current UK built environment market. The level of expertise and competence demonstrated by a practising chartered quantity surveyor has consequences for the success or failure of a construction project. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is one of larger professional bodies with jurisdiction within the UK built environment and is responsible for the education and training to full chartered membership of practising quantity surveyors. The research explores to what extent current RICS professional education and training prepares the chartered practitioner with the skill and expertise to competently address issues of practice endemic in the current UK built environment market. Rationale for this research is the continuing increase in issues of conflict and dispute in UK construction (Allen 2013; Farah 2015; Rogers 2019); and equally the development of professional education and training for quantity surveying practitioners that enable these issues to be addressed with competence, probity and altruism. Reflection in practice developed the conceptual framework for this research and the theoretical constructs are derived from current research literature. Empirical research data has been gathered by survey and interview with practitioners themselves, which created a new approach and contribution to knowledge. An inductive approach has been adopted for this research that explores the problem from a constructionist paradigm which provides an understanding for the scale of individual practitioner experience. Developing from an established inventory of what knowledge and know-how should be in place to a new understanding of how professional education and training for quantity surveyors actually works in practice. The research established that chartered practitioners self-assess themselves to be weak in thirteen fundamental quantity surveying competencies and these identified weaknesses are compared with current RICS policies of required levels of competency RICS (2019). The research establishes a causal link between the occurrence of conflict and dispute in construction; practice-based issues for quantity surveyors; and practitioner self-assessed quantity surveying functions sensitive to lower levels of competence. These findings are the basis of recommendations subsequently made in the thesis that could be considered as a guide to improving standards of professional practice for quantity surveyors.