So hip it hurts

In June a handful of quantity surveyors left Gardiner & Theobald’s offices in London’s staid Bedford Square and went to Camden to join Mace’s new QS firm, Sense. They didn’t pierce their tongues or dye their hair green, but this defection to one of the capital’s hipper regions is symbolic of an interesting development in the culture of construction...

Quantity surveyors are cool.

They’re not even called quantity surveyors any more. They are cost consultants, and to listen to this new breed you’d think the gulf between the QS and the cost consultant is like the one between the traffic warden and James Bond. One lives by narrow rules, is deaf to human reasoning and thrives on minor infractions. The other saves the world and gets the girl.

According to the stereotype, QSs used to play a passive role, appointed by the architect, taking off from his detailed drawings and producing bills of quantities. They kept track of progress and barked to signal those unscripted events.

Today’s cost consultant is more glamorous but, for his supper, he’s got to sing louder. Here are a few ways leading cost consultants say they stay competitive.

1. They can magic up a quote from nowhere

The QS used to work up costs from drawings. Now that seems quaint and leisurely. How many clients do you know who will wait weeks to learn if their business plans are feasible? They want instant quotes. It’s not quite, “How much for a new facility for elected representatives in a smallish Northern European country?” But it’s not far off. “We’ve done cost models based on just verbal conversations,” said AYH’s managing director Peter Vince. “You know, 250-bed tower hotel on a city-centre site.”

How do they do this? Are they unfeasibly quick at leafing through Spons? No. Good cost consultants keep knowledge in the company. They can answer the question because they did a 250-bed hotel tower in a city centre last March. In fact they’ve done six in the last five years. And most importantly, they stored the project information so that anyone who needs to, is able to access and make sense of it. This is why getting a good knowledge management system (if they haven’t already) is a looming priority for many practices.

So is the old bill of quantities extinct? Not quite, but the job of producing detailed prices is getting pushed further down the supply chain to contractors’ QSs, or even specialist subcontractors. And the old skill of measuring has been knocked off its perch. One recent graduate said the skill of taking off from drawings occupied only one semester of his degree. Entire taking off and working up departments have vanished.

Is this good or bad? Who’s worrying about the detail? Because we all know who lurks there, don’t we? Iain Parker, a partner with Davis Langdon, thinks it’s okay.

“We were so blinkered with detail we were missing some of the real issues,” he said, like making the client happy.

And in the more collaborative styles of procurement gaining popularity today, a dogged, bean-counting approach just seems odd, says AYH’s Peter Vince. “Does it really add value to spend two days on an interim valuation?” he asks.

He’s got a point, but all this putting off of the taking off makes some uneasy. Harry Sharp, chair of the Pre-Construction Society, said that estimators are turning into bid managers, passing the measuring and taking off to the subcontractors. He thinks estimators are losing an important edge.

“Without an in-depth understanding of the design, resources and materials required for a project, how can a bid manager get a smell for a job, see the hidden risks and opportunities that make a tender safe and sound as well as competitive?” he said.

2. They are the client’s best friend

Traditionally the message from the QS would be phrased something like this:

“No.”

It’s not what’s on the drawings that matters. my guys know what’s not on the drawings

Chris Goldthorpe, SENSE

Their job was to keep the project on the route laid out by the bill of quantities. But nowadays they try to accommodate the clients’ wishes. “Marble instead of timber? Sure, but it’ll cost you. However, if you go with material X and shorten the length of component Y we just might be able to do it.“ This kind of scenario generation can’t help but endear the cost consultant to clients.

They also make it their business to deliver not just a building but a valuable asset for the client’s business.

“We’re challenging the brief more because it takes a lot to get the full facts,” says Charles Johnston, chairman of MDA. “You’ve got to ask what does he want? What are his sensitivities? What are his drivers?”

Up in Camden, Chris Goldthorpe, the bullish new MD of Sense, agrees. “It’s not what’s on the drawings that matters. My guys understand what’s not on the drawings.”

3. They rival the architect as project leader

Remember the days of the domineering architect calling the shots? They’re over. Now it’s as likely to be the cost consultant. The shift started in the 1980s when the concept of the “project manager” took hold. Suddenly it was conceivable to separate the role of the designer and the project leader. A power vacuum emerged and cost consultants have been sucked into it ever since.

And good thing too, says MDA’s Charles Johnston: “Architects are the biggest source of cost creep.”

Launce Morgan, chairman of the construction faculty of the RICS, says quantity surveyors have not been nearly as aggressive in cornering that market as they could have been. Mostly they just fell into it because it seemed a natural extension of what they were doing before.

4. They’re more like management consultants

Tony Burton, a partner at Gardiner & Theobald, believes the discipline is moving away from its old practical and technical roots. In the 1970s, he said, there were four universities offering degrees that exempted you from RICS examinations. Most youngsters joined a firm and got chartered through day release. Now the university degree has become the principal route into the profession. Practices like Gardiner & Theobald are opening up to non-cognates, too, converting arts and science graduates with part-time MScs. The theory is that graduates, cognate or non, are broader and more confident (read: smooth-talking) and therefore, one hopes, safer to set before the client.

In becoming cost consultants, quantity surveyors are following a path trodden by accountants who transformed themselves into management consultants, from bean counters to business gurus.

The signs are everywhere.

In large practices, management structures are getting flatter. At Davis Langdon, partner Iain Parker says the ratio of partner to employee has fallen from 1:20 to about 1:8. They also moved their HQ from the old warren of offices on the Kingsway in London to a swish new open-plan office around the corner. Parker says he used to put his jacket on to visit his boss’s office. Now the senior partner is as likely to be just a few desks along.

The culture has changed, too. Parker sees young people under more pressure now, presenting to clients or jousting with designers at an age when they used to be in back offices working up and taking off. People are working harder and longer. He notes also a general competitiveness in which everybody wants to end up boss.

“No more spending three hours down the pub at lunchtime,” he says (a little ruefully, perhaps).

Professional quantity surveyors (the dreaded PQS) have gotten a lot of stick in recent years for being reactionary and even superfluous. But Building magazine reported last month that charge-out rates for surveyors have increased by as much as 50% over the last two years. Any prediction of their demise is clearly wishful thinking. If they keep showing this much flair for re-inventing themselves, they’ll be around for a long time yet. cm