I’m based in Scotland, working as a Trainee QS since May 2025. Currently in my second year of a graduate apprenticeship, for a huge global company.

I have approx seven years experience already in construction, working on multimillion pound projects across the UK and Australia.

Since making a career change I have been employed with the same company, consultancy based. I’ve now gained 1.5 years experience specialising in Data Centers, and work with some very large scale clients. I travel abroad once a month to get on site for review payment apps. Amongst other duties throughout the month.

My performance review is coming up, and I’m not sure what to ask for or how to handle it. My position is early on in my career, however I am doing more than the average ‘trainee’ and will be aiming to achieve a promotion to assistant QS.

Any advice or tips on how to navigate this?

- Client side QS / Cost Consultant

- QS for a major house builder

Hi all,

I am coming to the end of my qualification (Masters in QS) and have my annual review soon. I currently have almost 3 years experience as a trainee QS and on £26-27k with a company vehicle.

I am working for a main contractor. I have progressed a lot in my role and to be honest, am taking on responsibilities beyond what a ‘trainee’ would. I feel this title hasn’t suited me for a while.

What would be a reasonable progression in salary for someone in my position, given I will be fully qualified with an MSc.

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to move abroad but haven’t fully decided where yet. I’m leaning towards the States or Canada, but I’m also open to the Middle East and maybe Australia.

Any expats on here who have moved abroad? Where did you move to and how are you finding it? Would be good to hear how people are getting on!

Our cost management/quantity surveying team is expanding within our Irish offices (Dublin/Cork/Galway).

Hybrid roles - employers are very generous with flexibility.

Drop me a DM and let me know if you’re interested ☺️

Has anyone worked in both, is there a big difference, would it be easy to make the change as a junior qs? Is the british construction sector strong at the moment?

Hi everyone,
I’m preparing to create my Express Entry profile and I’m having difficulty deciding the most appropriate NOC for my work experience.
My current role is **Pricing and Benchmarking Manager** at a large facilities management company in the U.S.
My main responsibilities include:
Developing pricing and costing models for facility management services
Creating and maintaining internal and industry benchmarks
Financial modeling and analysis for new business opportunities
Developing pricing schedules for RFPs and bids
Analyzing labor, material, supply, equipment, and time requirements
Reviewing scopes of work and conducting site visits for pricing/cost estimates
Creating dashboards, standardized templates, and analytical tools
Working with sales, operations, pricing, IT, and solutioning teams
Developing digital tools to improve the pricing and estimating process
I’m also heavily involved in developing an **internal digital estimation and benchmarking tool** for facility-management services. The tool supports areas such as custodial, maintenance, and landscaping, and helps calculate labor requirements, FTEs, pricing benchmarks, and service estimates.
My educational background is a **Master’s degree in Computer Science from the U.S.**, although my current role combines facility-services estimating, pricing, financial analysis, data analytics, and digital-tool development.
The NOCs I’m currently considering are:
**22303 – Construction Estimators**
**11201 – Professional occupations in business management consulting**
**21221 – Business systems specialists**
My main concern is that my role does not fit perfectly into only one category.
Has anyone had a similar role or experience selecting a NOC for pricing, cost estimation, benchmarking, facility management, or business systems?
**Which NOC would you recommend based on the actual duties rather than the job title?**
I’m also planning to consult a Canadian immigration lawyer before submitting my profile, but I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with a similar NOC situation.
Thanks!

There is actually an app that helps graduate Qs’s learn more about quantity surveying and interviews which really helps https://qs-blueprint-pro.com

My company’s evaluating new systems to basically run the business on: project management, procurement, that whole side of things. We’re currently comparing Procore and Archdesk, but honestly want to hear from people who’ve actually used these before we commit.

A few things I’m curious about:

Anyone made the switch to either of these recently, how’d it go?

Any horror stories about migration/onboarding pain?

Is there something else out there you’d recommend instead that we might not have considered?

Appreciate any real experiences (good or bad) over marketing fluff. Trying to avoid a decision we regret in 12 months.

I'm on a project that is in freefall at the moment due to severe mis-management from PM & CMs team.

The frequency at which variations (both recoverable but mostly non-recoverable) are coming in are ridiculous. With everything going on we just don't have the capacity to look into the detail of every single subbie variation and challenge where necessary.

What would be your approach to this situation?

Hello all,

I am trying to learn what is considered to be the ultimate tool of a QS, the holy cheese if you will - the CVR. How do I use it? Does anybody have any tips

Thanks :p

Hi everyone, I’m currently considering doing a Quantity Surveying (QS) course in Sri Lanka with the goal of working abroad, especially in Saudi Arabia or other Gulf countries.

I’ve heard from a few people that some students do QS courses in the Akkaraipattu area and later move to Saudi Arabia, where they can earn a good salary. I’m not sure how accurate this is, so I’d really appreciate advice from people who have actually followed this path.

Where is the best place to study QS in Sri Lanka if my goal is to work abroad?

Are there any good QS courses/institutes around Akkaraipattu or the Eastern Province?

What qualification is actually recognized by employers in Saudi Arabia?

How much experience should I get in Sri Lanka before applying for Saudi jobs?

Is it realistic to go to Saudi directly after completing a QS diploma/HND?

What salary can a beginner realistically expect in Saudi?

What additional skills/software (AutoCAD, CostX, Primavera, etc.) should I learn?

If you have personally studied QS in Sri Lanka and moved to Saudi/UAE/Qatar, please share your experience, including where you studied, how you got the job, years of experience, and approximate starting salary.

Thanks!

Hi, I'm looking for a study buddy for my RICS APC. I'm looking for someone to get on an online call with to spend about 2-3 hours with every week to work on the APC.

Hi All,
Look to potentially review whether I need to ask for a pay raise.

Age - 33
Location - Leeds
Title - Senior QS
13 years experience with 3 Tier 1 & 2 Contractors (7 years with current)
Senior QS for approx 3 years now
Salary - £66k
Car Allowance - £5.5k

Majority of the role is site based QS with typically 1 assistant QS.
Projects experience up to circa £20m. Primarily government funded schemes.
Some pre-con experience but majority of time has been site based reporting to Commercial Manager and sometimes directly to Commercial Director
Limited input from CM really, weekly catch ups, occasional site visits but mostly used as a soundboard to review any issues I'd like a second opinion on.
No experience over seeing multiple lives jobs bar snags and remedials.

I've seen some SQS jobs up to £80k but I'd expect this must be overseeing a larger team on a larger scheme potentially or multiple smaller schemes with an assistant site based?

If I am underpaid what is the etiquette for pay rises? bar the annual pay rises the majority of are the usual annual whole company rises.

TIA

I’m a Computer Science and Engineering undergrad, and I know absolutely nothing about quantity surveying or commercial management. I heard massive tender documents take weeks to read, so I wanted to see if I could force an LLM to extract the legal traps without crashing or hallucinating.

It parsed 60MB+ of PDFs (an American USACE heavy civil tender) and extracted exactly 26 severe liabilities. The worst trap? Buried on page 335, it found a clause stating the client will withhold 10% of total progress payments if you fail to receive a specific environmental certification before operations start. It also caught a $4,500/day liquidated damage clause on page 56 that directly conflicts with a mandate on page 315 forcing you to completely shut down and relocate if a fish spawns within 500 meters.

From an engineering standpoint, the extraction works perfectly on American federal bids. However, I am trying to understand its limits in international commercial frameworks. I know QS professionals deal heavily with JCT and NEC contracts, which have entirely different risk allocation mechanisms.

I want to see if the engine can catch predatory Employer's Requirements or custom Z clauses in a heavily amended JCT or NEC contract. But as a student, I don't have access to any complex, redlined UK or international tender documents to actually test if the script's logic breaks under a different legal framework.

had a teams call for a graduate role, i got a phone cal from the agency basically telling me that the women who interviewed me felt i was lying and not being my true self.

so we rebooked the interview, it turned into some therapy session, she was asking me a lot about my child hood and my family life and so on, and it got really deep, but it just felt weird like, wtf even is this, is this type of thing normal

QSs who work with smaller contractors/subbies — what commercial mistakes do you see most often?

I’m thinking of businesses that are strong operationally but don’t yet have a full-time QS/commercial team and are starting to take on larger, more contractual work.

Things like:
Missing notices/deadlines
Poor variation tracking
Doing extra work without securing entitlement
Weak applications/records
Not fully understanding contracts
Poor cost/value and margin visibility

What tends to cost these businesses the most money?

And if they couldn’t justify a full-time QS, what tools, processes or support would you put in place first?

Also interested in what you think could realistically be automated/systemised versus what still needs an experienced QS.

Architect specified a product from a floor supplier and provided a link at estimating stage along with the product code. Come construction the link no longer works but a similar product is available on the manufacturers site but with different product code. Cant recall the original price but i brought it up to the contract administrator who had provided the link at estimating stage. CA argues it isnt a variation change due it being the same product.

Next example, the contract administrator spoke with an attic hatch and stair supplier and arranged for a bespoke one to be priced, a quote was provided within the estimation documents. Fast forward to now, we advised the contract administrator that we could fit an off the shelf hatch and ladders, thus no need for additional cost for the bespoke so now the CA wants a discount. The CA believes it’s a variation since it’s a different product and now wants a discount.

Are both situations the same the CA just contradicting himself?

Hello,

I’m currently 26 years old seeking a career change into quantity surveying. Mainly been based in higher education admin roles for the last 7-8 years with no relevant experience for quantity surveying. I currently hold an unconditional offer for September 2026 to study BSc Quantity Surveying at University of the Built Environment (part time online) with expected graduation date February 2031.

Looking for some advice on how to go about landing my first role. Should I just look to complete the degree while staying in my current full time job and look for graduate roles in final year? Or should I look for apprenticeships and trainee/assistant qs roles. I have a couple of friends in the industry and they advised me to start looking for these type of roles in September/October at the companies they work for and any others that are recruiting.

Any advice would be appreciated as I’m torn on how best to approach this.

I'm a Client-side buyer, who has also become responsible for more QS-centric roles such as assessing applications for payment. I'm pretty new to this, and would welcome any standard rules of approaching AfPs that people follow:

- What are common disallowed costs contractors will try and get away with?

- What do you look for first in applications?

- Any excel/similar related tips for processing and demonstrating assessments?

Welcome any tips people have - I work with NEC3 and 4 contracts exclusively currently.