Hello friends 👋 This week I’m going to briefly go through the Quantification competency. I like this competency as it involves both pre and post contract knowledge. In my short career, I’ve mainly worked on projects in the pre-contract phase, but I’m slowly pushing to address this balance. Like most APC competencies, Quantification is a vast competency, so it’s unlikely you will know everything, but again you will be expected to understand the basics. I’ll follow the format

Hello friends 👋 I’m going to take a bit of a break from the APC competency breakdown this week. This week marks a significant point for me because I’ve managed to put something out for the last 12 weeks. It’s quite difficult putting something out into the void, you know no one is reading but I’m trying to build a portfolio of information that may, someday, be useful to someone. The biggest push to continue writing this weekly blog/newsletter thing has come from watching Ali

Hello, dear colleagues on the internet 👋 After completing your undergraduate course or conversion programme for Quantity Surveying, the next big challenge is to get “chartered”. But what does it mean to get chartered? In simple terms, being a chartered surveyor means that your skills and expertise have been approved and tested by a panel of expert surveyors and your skills can be relied upon. A key benefit of getting chartered is that it often tends to lead to promotions and

Hello friends 👋 I hope everyone is doing well and adjusting to the “new normal”. This week I want to talk about my experience with the software that I tend to use as a QS and I want to know what you guys are using too! Microsoft Office: This is a pretty obvious one, I am sure everyone in the world uses Microsoft tools in some form or another. a) Outlook – Emails. Lots and lots of emails. Pretty self-explanatory at this point. b) Word – Used for reports, minutes and bid wri

Hello friends 👋 This will be my sixth newsletter in a row! I am currently writing this whilst sitting in my car in a hospital car park and I needed to do something ‘productive’. I’ve been struggling with getting motivated to do particular tasks even though I know I need to do them. At uni, if I knew had an assignment due in 3 weeks I wouldn’t really get down to writing until I was a few days before the deadline. Terrible I know – but I’m sure many of you can relate. I think

Hello friends 👋 There are many skills you need as a quantity surveyor, not all of which are QS specific. The best QS’s I know share the following traits: Highly Organised Excellent communicators Comfortable with numbers/arithmetic/geometry Great team-players The skills above are generally transferable and can be applied across any industry i.e. finance, general business and consultancy. But for QS’s, there is one skill/characteristic that sets the best QS’s apart – excellent

Hello friends 👋 If, like me, you decided to become a QS after you already completed your first undergraduate degree, and you want to get chartered by the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors), you must complete a conversion course. It’s really important that the course you sign up for is accredited by the RICS. Most of the large consultant QS firms that offer graduate programs will sponsor non-cognate graduates to undertake the conversion course. Bear in mind – whe

Hello folks! 👋 Have you ever felt like you were working for/towards something, but in your heart felt that there was no future in it for you? That’s how I felt after studying Law for 3 years at a relatively good UK university. During A-Levels (I did Maths, Economics & History) I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at university. I knew I wasn’t good enough to do 3 years of Maths. I knew all the good Economics courses required you to be very good at Maths – which I wasn’t.