Letter: Can civilisation survive without surveyors?

Something in Richard Steer’s piece (“A matter of public record”, 13 March 2015, page 28) made me sit up and think. He quoted approvingly RICS as saying “without surveyors, projects do not get built”. Are we really that indispensable? Without the surveyor/project manager at his side (or usually ahead of him), the architect might have to re-learn how to manage projects. Without the surveyor, cost prediction might suffer (but again the architect may have to brush up on his cost/m2). Without the surveyor, the contractor would have to prepare his own bill of quantities. Despite all this, I think that the industry might still just about get by if a tsunami destroyed every surveyor’s office.

Malcolm Taylor FRICS, via email