All You Need To Know About Choosing a Quantity Surveyor for your Extension…

Quantity Surveyors and Your Extension

If your extension project is a relatively modest one, chances are you will never meet a Quantity Surveyor throughout the duration of your building works.

Unless it’s down the pub of course. You may as well go and read something else.

Quantity Surveyors come into play for the larger building project and it is up to them to produce what is known as the Bill of Quantities.

A Bill of Quantities sounds grandiose, but in reality, all it is, is the amount of materials that the Quantity Surveyor thinks will be needed to complete the project, from the outset until fruition.

The Bill of Quantities enables any competing Building Contractor to work out what he thinks the job will cost to complete.

He submits his tender and with a little bit of luck and if it is a competitive and attractive one, he may be rewarded with a nice big extension to build.

Lovely Jubbly

The money he makes from this then pays for the family holiday to Torremolinos. (Even if his daughters don’t really want to go anymore, not unless they can bring a friend and ‘Oh my God Dad, it's so boring and I just want to be with my friends, OK?’)

Contingencies

The Quantity Surveyor will be responsible for more than just the Bill of Quantities. Contingencies will be built into any documentation that will make allowances for anything that might go wrong during the Building Process.

He will also be expected to produce financial progress reports which will then be submitted to the client in order to keep them abreast of the situation and up to date with financial developments.

His is a steady hand on the financial tiller. If there is any money left in the kitty, then it is up to the client to decide whether he should have concrete lions in his Italian Renaissance garden, or statues of serene Greek ladies holding urns with water coming out of them.

Some Quantity Surveyors offer legal advice to their clients and if any disputes arise during the building works, will act on their behalf.

That’s about all we know about Quantity Surveyors here at the Building Sheriff.

That, and the fact that the inimitable Fulton McKay was fully trained as one. One for the teenagers.