Planning Engineer vs QS
In the Open Standard
Philip JonkerMember for 21 years 11 months
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I think the subject matter defined the discussion, and there is no point in running away. Any Engineer who has been trained correctly should be able to take off quantities, whereas it will take a QS a number of years in the field to learn engineering. The commonly used title for QS’ is "bean counters" ie the accountants in engineering terms. I think that anybody who confuses an engineer and a QS needs to go for language lessons, the disciplines is so divergent that it impossible to even try and compare them, AN easy excersize is use any decent dictionary and look up engineer and quantity surveyor, might give you some direction.
I think Monsieur Eiffel for instance would be turning in his grave if he had to to read the amount of manure spread around here. Try reading something like a book by the title of "Dammit" by Henry Olivier, based on Tarbela dam in Pakistan, (He also designed a few others, interalia, Aswan, etc) and then try and explain why QS deserve the title of Planning ENGINEER.
Stop the bull, ther is good QS’s as well as engineers, but get the facts right.
I think Monsieur Eiffel for instance would be turning in his grave if he had to to read the amount of manure spread around here. Try reading something like a book by the title of "Dammit" by Henry Olivier, based on Tarbela dam in Pakistan, (He also designed a few others, interalia, Aswan, etc) and then try and explain why QS deserve the title of Planning ENGINEER.
Stop the bull, ther is good QS’s as well as engineers, but get the facts right.
19 replies
Oldest first- 0Philip Jonker ·The bottom line is that there is quite a vast difference in training, and normally quantities would be part of an engineers job, however, QS training from my experience is more or less restricted to building work. In most instances at academic institutions QS is part of the architectural faculties.
- 0Sukumaran Subaramaniyan ·Agreed with you on the differences for Planning Engineer and QS job scope. Basically, the nature of job is controlling the needs for Planning Engineer and QS.
As you mentioned, the demand is very high for QS in bulding industry. As for Planning Engineer if there is a necessity (ie. project value more than 100 million) than the contractor will hire the Planner. If not the Project Engineer end up doing the scheduling work.
The worst thing is when the project is an in-house project (client and contractor are managed by same management), the contractor will never bother to develop a realistic schedule. Contractor will create a schedule for the sake of contract requirement and the baseline will be pasted on wall (as a wall paper) without any changes until the end of project.
In term of academic, the Planning and QS papers are part of Construction Management / Project Management studies. Never come across that Architectural faculty is offering QS paper because architectural itself is a specialist field.
Regards. - 0Alalasundaram Ravikumar ·Hi Philip
I fully agree with you that engineer need to concentrate on solving the problem, if possible within the budget. Or else, if left with no other choice, need to exceed the allocated budget and try to recover it from other part of the work.
However, in general, for any DEVELOPER/investor , money is the key concern. Though the DEVELOPERS/investors very much rely on the QS to know about the financial position every now and then, they tend to lose focus on the progress. However they need to remember that slippage in progress leads to losing money. So I can say that when the planning is given due consideration and serious respect is given to the schedules prepared by the planners, the QS job will become a routine. Only when the developers/PMs fail to respect the plans/schedules, they turn towards the QS. So it is the planner who helps to prevent the disease and QS plays lead rule in the curing stage, once the disease had run deep.
Regards
Ravi - 0Sukumaran Subaramaniyan ·Philip,
This in-house contractor mostly measure the pogress based on financial value ie. How much value of works were completed at site for the past month?
Usually, when the disaster strike than the contractor start to crack their head. They dig back the old files and look for the delaying events that hamper the work progresses at site and work out the schedule for EOT claim.
Basically, the Planner having a tough time with the local contractor to proof that planning is an important field in contruction industry.
Regards. - 0Stuart Ness ·Philip,
I am astonished that you seem to think that QS’s are only limited to architectural building works; you need to get out a bit more.!! QS’s are fundamental to the financial success of many types of projects, including roads, bridges, heavy civil works, marine works, M&E works as well as general building work.
And who do you think produces Bills of Quantities in the first place? Certainly not an engineer (or at least not if you want any accuracy!!), and a QS will generally produce a more comprehensive and accurate Change or Variation Order Request than any engineer.
Stuart Ness FRICS
www.rosmartin.com
- 0Philip Jonker ·Hi Stuart,
I am not derogatory about QS’s merely pointing out that engineers have or had (in the past) the technical experience to solve problems.
As for your claim that engineers cannot produce bills of quantities, I beg to differ, as I was producing these on a daily basis in 1972, do you know how to survey a road, then to put the survey data onto a drawing, and then design the road with the correct geometrics, including the stormwater drainage, foundations, and then do a take of of cut and fill, and produce a detailed B0Q? When an engineering problem occurs on site how do you solve it, if by law you have to be an engineer. So why not understand your discipline, and it is only money at the end of the day, lets fire all the engineers, and start a new discipline ie Planning QS’s. Or maybe the Bean counting fairies.
I replied to a thread about tall buildings just now, maybe have a look at it.
No offense meant, but I know quite a few QS’s who will agree with me, and also some who have taken the time to learn, and have become good schedulers.
Regards - 0Charleston-Joseph Orbe ·Hi Clive,
I agree with you, QS a no... no... in planning.
Otherwise you will end up with an open ended plan subject to claims, variations, extension of time and other contractural issues (in other words to perpetuate QS existence and reason for living).
Planning for visionary, doers, leaders or engineers IMHO.
By the way, why use those SMM, why not try CSI masterformat.
Cheers,
Charlie - 0Stuart Ness ·Quote from Bill:
“Having said that, is sad but many have progressed to doing Contracts Admininstration, Contracts Preperation, Costing of a project and they have only high school and little or no University at all, and are trying to do a Professionals job.”
I think your view about Engineers is rather jaundiced, Bill. I know a few Engineers who have been to University, and even yet they can’t spell or punctuate properly!!
Cheers,
Stuart
www.rosmartin.com
- 0Philip Jonker ·The problem with this moderation system, is that we never know what we said, hope they are keeping a record of it, as they would probably have wiped a few of Churchills speeches, if they were in charge at the time. I think it is the ultimate in censorship, and they would probably have found a way to ban any discussion on "the Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien, who was a SA, and grew up with and in the same town as my grandfather. These so-called moderators are a bunch of ignoramuses, who will probably try and delete this posting, I appeal to PPadmin, who has a sense of humour, to overide the moderators. At least contain your dogs of war, et tu brute, till a few guys have read this.
This is a classic posting, hope it is not deleted, as I will copy it and paste it till all interestrd parties have read it. Will do this on a regular basis, so that all can read. - 0Wilmore Makonese ·Well these people called QSs i view them as helpers to Engineers in any construction environment. I worked for 3 years in Africa and used to everything that a QS does. BOQ, costs, estimates, projections etc and we still used to deliver our projects on time. Now i am working on a project where i would rather not worry about how to come up with an actual cost but would rather have a QS do it for me as i am too busy scheduling thousands of activities and adding more programs each day.
The verdict is we need QSs to their bit, but they are no comparison to planning engineers.
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