Quantification skills in the construction industry

Measurement/quantification is a core skill of the quantity surveyor and such skills need to be placed within a more appropriate educational framework to ensure their continuing relevance. This paper reports on a study that sought first, to identify the characteristics associated with measurement/quantification skills and second, to weight or rank their relative importance. A total of 37 characteristics associated with a person undertaking the measurement task were identified following a search of available literature and a series of taped interviews with practitioners. These were then classified and grouped together into a model structured according to the fundamental requirements of educational soundness, technical soundness and personal soundness. Twenty-one representative characteristics of this model were then rated for importance by 77 undergraduate quantity surveying students and 30 qualified surveyors working in private practice. The resulting analysis enabled the subsets of the characteristics of measurement skill to be ranked in the following order of importance: ability to formulate and solve problems, sufficient knowledge of salient aspects of the task, good intellect, ability to activate responses, adequate construction capability, ability to transmit information, good character, practical capability and good physical characteristics. This ranking allowed the proposed model of the characteristics of measurement skills to be weighted to show that educational soundness was more important than technical and soundness.