Call for senior QSs to mentor graduates

Michael Byng, deputy chairman of the RICS construction faculty, said that older members of the profession should be encouraged to pass on their knowledge to graduates.

Writing in QS News this week Byng proposes that senior professionals should be encouraged to lecture at universities. He also called for the creation of “flying squads” of senior professionals to create courses for large groups of employees within larger QS practices and contractors.

Byng wrote: “In these times of strict accounting, I don’t believe we properly value the wealth of knowledge in the older, senior members of the industry. We let the valuable “know-how” evaporate all too easily.”

Byng said the lack of skilled professionals in the industry was very damaging. He wrote: “The cost to the industry of this current lack of skills is enormous, not just to the building and civil engineering industry, but to the tax-paying public as a whole.”