MEETING IN THE MIDDLE –A QUANTITY SURVEYING PERSPECTIVE ON CHANGING EDUCATION NEEDS FOR THE PROFESSIONS

Cornell University, Ithace N.Y.

INTRODUCTION

The system of tertiary education for quantity surveyors that has served us for about 40 years is coming under scrutiny from a number of directions. Observed trends in tertiary education are not isolated. There is evidence that shifts in thinking have a global reach. We must ask ourselves why it is so and what is to be done.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Australian historical context is that, up to about 1960, the only real quantity surveying qualification was direct entry into the IQSA, the forerunner of today’s Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (AIQS) or the RICS, a British institute. Study was undertaken on the job and wherever it was available, often by correspondence from England. Before a student or probationer was admitted the applicant was required to pass a two-day measurement examination. The RICS exams were much more comprehensive and extremely difficult for Australians to pass since they were based on British practice.

Around 1960, technical colleges around the country began to offer part-time quantity surveying courses where students undertook all their study after working hours. Students undertook cadetships or indentures with practicing firms during their course of study. At that time the colleges concentrated on vocational training, including construction trade courses. The professional courses quickly became sandwich courses with substantial blocks of “day-release” study during the week. The colleges negotiated with the AIQS to allow graduates of these courses direct entry to the Institute without further examination. These proposals were readily accepted because it relieved the Institute of the burden of setting and marking exams. A logbook and interview after a period of practical experience (probationary period) became the single test of entry retained by the Institute. We quickly got used to the idea that universities would produce, with minimal help, ready-to-employ quantity surveyors (i.e.,measurers with potential in other areas of competence).

It is easy to forget that students and graduates were not, at that time, expected to be highly profitable. Their work was carefully supervised and edited as part of their on-going training and the firms’ long-standing risk management practices.

The colleges started the move away from vocational training in favour of academic education, first becoming Institutes of Technology and ultimately, Universities. This trend was driven by successive federal government education policies. Even then these “practical” universities retained a vocational focus in many of their degree courses but the trend towards more academic bias and away from a vocational bias was set in train.

THE EVOLVING PROFESSION

When vocational courses were first developed the range of quantity surveying services typically offered was very limited. The profession offered some estimating and detailed measurement (bills of quantities). Cost planning was in its infancy and contract administration was rare. Quantity surveying core competencies were limited to a handful. In the following 40 years, pushed by progressive firms, we developed sophisticated cost planning, documentation and contract administration techniques in response to evolving procurement and contracting environments. Our base competencies rose to around 15. More recently quantity surveyors have begun to specialise in a wide range of cost related advisory areas.

It is now difficult to define the “average” quantity surveyor, much less define the core skills that constitute a qualified quantity surveyor. It leads me to wonder if it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to develop a degree course that will educate a complete modern quantity surveyor. On top of the added complexity, competition policy has had the effect of reducing prices to the extent that students and graduates are expected to be immediately profitable whilst costly supervision and editing techniques have disappeared. They have not necessarily been replaced with new risk management techniques appropriate to current technology and practice.

WHITHER THE PROFESSION?

Whilst quantity surveying practices will continue to offer a traditional range of consulting services, perhaps delivered differently, there will be an accelerating trend towards specialisation. We see this with firms and individuals specialising in tax depreciation, facilities management, due diligence and compliance, dispute resolution, estimating, contract management, project management, business planning and advice, IT systems development and sales, IT contract management, property investment and analysis, property development and the sale of value-engineered cost data. The AIQS published competencies now number 31. Services offered have grown well beyond this already. It is unreasonable to expect that quantity surveyors are expert in all the recognised QS competencies. Many will have a general knowledge in some areas and will specialise in other areas. QS general practitioners will not be inhibited to refer clients to specialists, where they may not be experienced in particular specialist areas of practice, as is normal in other professions.

Graduate quantity surveyors are being employed at an increasing rate by other than practicing firms. Many of these people will be qualified quantity surveyors with high levels of specialisation, but they may never acquire the broad range of core skills to entitle them to full membership of the AIQS in its present form.

There is no doubt that today’s graduates will be doing different things differently by the end of their working life, just as this generation has done. In order to maintain competence in the face of change, the profession will continue to strengthen continuing professional development requirements. This trend will also be driven by legislation designed to encourage people to remain in the professions whilst ensuring that professional standards meet community expectations.

COMPETENCE-BASED ASSESSMENT

The professions have been slow to adopt competence based assessment for entry into their institutions, preferring to rely on input based agreements negotiated from time to time with universities. The input based models are no longer appropriate for a number of reasons, including the move towards multiple specialisations and the reluctance of universities to offer long vocational degree courses.

Competence based assessment is a better way to admit new members because it is objective, fairer, more flexible to cope with changing specialties and it has the potential to recognise many more entry paths into the profession.

There is a strong move in the world towards personal education and development. We should give recognition to this trend and make a place for it within our entry paths. With a move towards competence based membership criteria and assessment, the way in which members are admitted and accredited will change. We will do away with the “high jump” approach to professional membership in favour of a “hurdles” method.

At present applicants must acquire all the core assessment criteria and experience for a single entry test. In future, members will, after graduation, acquire competencies in particular areas of practice over time as they need or want them, until they are able to apply for and be granted elevation to general practice or to any of a number of specialist areas.

Such a system will require more commitment on the part of the Institute to its admission and accreditation processes, but it will enable significantly better control and management of membership. This will be important as voluntary professional registration schemes take effect. Membership of our professional organisation at any level above ordinary membership will once again mean much more than holding an undergraduate degree. It would be the basis of a true partnership between the educators and the profession.

As the nature of employment, specialisation and quantity surveying itself changes, the current “GP” model of membership is likely to become less relevant and it is the professions responsibility to ensure that it has a structure that is relevant to the needs of members now and in the future. Under more generic regimes, the profession itself will once again be the gatekeeper of the profession. Using self-controlled schemes to establish standards that accord with community and industry expectations, guided by professional Services legislation, the AIQS will again become the sole agency recognising and accrediting quantity surveyors in general practice and in specialist areas of expertise. Partnership between universities and professional associations will remain, although a university degree will not necessarily be synonymous with qualification.

EDUCATION TRENDS

Now, under new government funding regimes and financial pressures to run profitable courses, there is a trend towards consolidating faculties and offering more generic undergraduate degrees. It is generally agreed that the vocational skills of today will not necessarily be the skills of tomorrow and that it is more important to educate graduates in critical and creative thinking, leaving vocational skills to be acquired in other ways, as they were before 1960.

This is not a new concept for universities. It has always been the practice for graduates of sciences and the arts to undergo further vocational training in their chosen field after graduation. I believe that the move towards generic degrees is not necessarily harmful to the profession and at best has the potential to offer significant advantages, if handled carefully.

There are, of course, costs and pitfalls that must be understood. It is likely that full-time undergraduate degree courses will fall back to educating students in critical and creative thinking, with knowledge of project and construction processes, communication and management skills. It would be a specialised kind of management degree. These courses would not last longer than two to three years. Beyond this, vocational skills would be acquired by combinations of postgraduate and special courses, on-the-job experience, corporate training, personal study and life long learning.

There are practical pitfalls and problems with such an approach. Firstly many young people leaving school, and their parents, still have an expectation that after completing a course of study for a vocationally directed degree that they will be qualified to work in a job or profession. This would not be the case. After qualifying they would be looking at two to three years additional studyto fit them for a particular career path and after that a life-long commitment to acquiring knowledge.

This prospect may well deter school-leavers from entering such a course in favour of a more structured career path. At present marketing for undergraduates is shared between the profession and faculties who have a vested interest in maintaining strong single strand undergraduate courses. Both would need to carefully target undergraduate entry post-graduate marketing in different ways to attract good quality students into the professions. Without structured courses to fill, it is suggested the Universities could well be disinclined to market individual professions.

It is also known that students develop core professional attitudes from early exposure and study in their particular discipline. We know that these attitudes (part of their tacit knowledge) are important and valuable to employers. Just as young architects develop an early appreciation of spatial and environmental concepts, young quantity surveyors develop a particular style of critical thinking, based on an understanding and appreciation of the components and processes of construction that comes from measuring work. We do not know how we will replace this early skill development and subsequent attitudes if graduates are required to learn these core motivational skills on-the-job after graduation, when their attitudes have already been formed.

It is likely that universities and the professions will respond to today’s education and qualification challenges in a variety of ways. The approaches are unlikely to be as homogenous as they have been in recent history. Some universities will retain strongly focussed degree courses with a high vocational content. These courses will attract those students who are seeking a degree with a streamed outcome. They will also attract international students who have neither the time nor the capability to seek out education options over time. It would be expected that graduates would acquire all the necessary core competencies for base professional entry through study in such a course.

Where universities do not have appropriate resources or student capacity for complete courses they will offer more generic project and construction management degree courses. Some core competencies for base professional entry may have to be acquired in other ways.  Universities would be accredited for their educational capability, as proposed by the Universities partnering arrangements. The professional tertiary course guides published by the AIQS will nominate the accredited universities as well as the competencies that graduates will expect to acquire from a course. Courses may be rated, so that a full course may achieve a five star rating whilst a partial course would be given a lower rating. This would enable students to plan their tertiary education.

Further core and specialist competencies will be acquired in a number of ways. Some will be by way of post-graduate study, external study, self-study and on the- job training. Universities, the AIQS, TAFE colleges and private educators are likely to offer courses of further study, sometimes in collaboration. Life-long learning, including regulated continuing professional development is likely to be delivered in the same way and will be seamlessly integrated with the acquisition of further and specialist competencies.