Growth & Jobs | Recognise us! - Quantity surveyors travel long road to acknowledgement

Despite the critical role quantity surveyors play in ensuring the prudent financial management of construction, they still have no legal professional industry recognition, says Earl Samuels, chief development financing officer of The Jamaica National Group.

The financial managers of our country’s booming multibillion-dollar building and construction industry were put on par with carpenters and steelworkers under the latest draft regulations of the new Building Act, Samuels said. That categorisation is not for a group of people who determine whether project finances and contractual relationships on building projects are managed with professionalism.

“The New Building Act does not adequately recognise the role of the quantity surveyor,” Samuels said. This despite the fact that “professional registration for all quantity surveyors has been fruitlessly pursued with successive administrations for more than 30 years”.

In an address to the Jamaican Institute of Quantity Surveyors (JIQS) at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel on January 10, Samuels said, “I support the institute in its efforts to lobby the Government to expedite the compulsory registration of quantity surveyors, and to delay the approval of the regulations to the Building Act until the Quantity Surveyors Registration Act is passed by Parliament.”

Financial institutions depend on the professional services of quantity surveyors for their mortgage programme and the provision of financing for residential, commercial and infrastructure construction projects. Their services help to mitigate the risk of the funding institution and are critical to the successful approval and disbursement of funds.

PROJECT REVIEWS

He pointed out that these professionals would have had to review more than $10 billion in construction and civil engineering projects disbursed by the National Works Agency, the Jamaica Public Service and the National Water Commission, according to a Planning Institute of Jamaica review of economic performance for the July to September 2018 period. This excludes other public- and private-sector projects they reviewed for the period.

J’Vaughn Jacobs, president of JIQS, told the annual meeting of the quantity surveyors that their expert knowledge on construction costs and contracts is essential for an industry, which employs approximately 100,000 persons and contributes about 7.2 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product.

“While self-regulation is good, there comes a point when government legislation becomes necessary to safeguard and protect the profession, as well as the general public, from persons who seek to, and have been providing quantity surveying services without the requisite qualification and experience,” Jacobs declared. “The advancement of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Act is even more critical now, given the fact that the current Building Act does not recognise quantity surveyors.”

With a total of just over 50 members, the JIQS president said it is in the interest of its members for their profession to be treated the same as architects, engineers and land surveyors.

“We have been having dialogue with the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, as well as the Ministry of Local Government and Community Development, and the feedback we have received recently is encouraging,” Jacobs said. “We trust, however, that the dialogue will continue and that these partnerships which are developing will lead to the successful advancement and subsequent passing of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Act in very short order.”