We need a ‘grey-hair’ revolution

The professional press has been full of articles recently about the lack of skills in the QS profession – graduates who are innumerate, can’t measure, can’t value and – so some employers would have you believe – are not really employable material, despite several years at university, involving considerable debt.

At the same time I notice that names of members of the profession I have known and have taken, sadly, for granted in the 40 years I’ve been in the profession, are disappearing.

I recently had cause to look through the RICS Directory of Members, to find an address of an old colleague and mentor, only to be disappointed he wasn’t listed anymore.

Very sad. I remembered when he taught me the basics, starting with drainage, then internal finishes and on to internal doors, until I had been through the whole process and could measure all the elements of a building.

When I eventually contacted my old friend, through differing means, I found that he had resigned from the RICS on his retirement due to the need to maintain

“run-off” cover for his professional indemnity insurance – well that was the final nail in his professional coffin – added to the fact that he didn’t feel respected towards the end of his career and that the profession “wasn’t what it used to be”.

While my friend wasn’t qualified as a lecturer, he certainly taught me all the basics of the profession I practice today, such as measurement, valuation and the like, to get through the old direct examinations operated by the Institution. Well enough indeed to allow me to pass my knowledge on to my staff in my own practice.

All of this is unstructured and doesn’t meet the needs of a modern economy. A few new surveyors have been trained and encouraged to make a career as a result but what would be the effect if the RICS (and others) offered their senior members contemplating retirement the chance to retain their valued membership by agreeing to train staff on a part-time basis in, say, the last five years of their planned career.

So far so good, but what of the education sector – my friends who teach tell me that the demand for QS courses is increasing dramatically from year to year, but the colleges are having difficulty in satisfying needs due to a lack of teaching staff and the problems of paying commercially based salaries.

The cost to the industry of this lack of skills is enormous, not just to the building and civil engineering industry, but to the tax-paying public as a whole

Surely there is a solution here, if the RICS organised a scheme by which senior members of the profession, nearing retirement, devoted some of the time they are obliged to spend on CPD (Continuing Professional Development) to lecturing at universities on topical quantity surveying subjects where skills are lacking, charging marginal rates to do so. The RICS could take a small percentage of the fees/salaries earned to create a common insurance fund, that would cover these members’ PII “run-off” obligations into retirement and allow them to retain, what is for most of them, the most important qualification of their working lives.

But what about the shortage of skills with graduates already in the profession? Some of these senior members could be encouraged to create “flying squads” to create courses on the subjects in need of improvement to groups within large practices or contractors. Larger employees could make it part of the retirement process for their senior staff.

So good for the big boys but what about the smaller organisations, how do they fit in? Perhaps these same “flying squads” could attach themselves to the regional CPD centres and offer short evening classes to anyone not falling into the other categories.

I don’t know exactly what the cost of this would be, but I imagine it would be a bargain. As an American said to me many years ago – if you think education is expensive – try ignorance. 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.

My mentor from all those years ago feels that he could have made a far greater contribution towards the end of his career than he did, if only he’d been allowed to – and he’s not alone.There are many senior members of the industry who feel neglected and forgotten when they get to the end of their careers and would have been delighted to have been given an opportunity to share and transfer their knowledge.

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

So at a time when our politicians are seeking to make age discrimination illegal, let’s stop moaning about the lack of skills and the allegedly falling standards of our graduates and take the initiative to encourage our “grey hairs” to remain part of the industry community, transfer their knowledge and make a valuable contribution to the industry and the economy whilst doing so.