Quantity Surveyors solve a Budget Speech problem that shouldn’t exist

Are we getting value for money from our investment? In other words, how do we ensure that our infrastructure is delivered on time, on budget and to specification? These are key questions raised in a leaked copy of the delayed Budget Speech.

“The Quantity Surveying profession exists explicitly to give these assurances, but quantity surveyors must be optimally employed and utilised to reap their full benefits,” says Nolubabalo Tsolo, Executive Director at the Association of South African Quantity Surveyors (ASAQS).

So, if the solution is already available, why will the Minister mention these concerns when he finally delivers the budget on 12 March?
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Understaffed and underutilised
Tsolo says that, in her experience working on public infrastructure projects, quantity surveyors are generally underutilised because stakeholders do not fully understand the importance and value of their contributions.

As a result, Quantity Surveying teams may be understaffed and therefore unable to give the best assurance of the value-for-money proposition they are meant to support.

“Unfortunately, when a project falls short on quantity surveying, it falls short in every other aspect as well,” says Tsolo.

An agent of value
Quantity surveyors provide a range of critical services, including financial and risk management. They also ensure that factors like the cost impact of timings and delays, as well as deviations from specifications, are accounted for.

In addition, Quantity Surveyors produce valuations for payments based on the reconciliation of the quality of work delivered against the specified work expected, highlighting any shortcomings as confirmed with the design team. “This gives project stakeholders vital evidence to pursue the right preventive and corrective strategies,” says Tsolo.

In any development, each procuring party should typically employ its own quantity surveying function, including developers, banks, and contractors. This structure provides a cross-checking mechanism that offers security to the stakeholders and incentivises them to deal honestly.

“Quantity surveyors also supply an implicit auditing function,” says Tsolo. For example, a bank may release or withhold further funds only after its QS, in collaboration with the project architects, engineers, and project managers have inspected the executed works.

A qualified professional
Quantity surveyors are no less important than lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers or any other professional, it is professionalised by law. In the case of QSs, they must register with the South African Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession (SACQSP) after passing its Assessment of Professional Competence, in terms of the Quantity Surveying Profession Act 49 of 2000.

In addition, QSs are compelled to pursue monitored continuous professional development (CPD) throughout their career to stay abreast of the latest developments in the field.

Cost versus benefits
Trying to save money by limiting a project’s complement of quantity surveyors is short-sighted. That is not to say the government should employ an army of them for each development. However, ample numbers will provide the very outcome it is hoping to achieve - infrastructure that is delivered on time, on budget and to specification.

Used to the greatest effect, quantity surveying provides a critical path to sustainable infrastructure development and economic growth.

“So, we implore the government to give due consideration to the profession and ensure their projects are staffed with sufficient, competent Quantity Surveyors, limiting fruitless and wasteful expenditure.” says Tsolo.

ENDS

MEDIA CONTACT: Stephné du Toit, [email protected], 084 587 9933, www.atthatpoint.co.za 
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