Quantity surveyor or not

Blue bull

Hi.

Im starting a big renovation job on a house in the next month or two. My question is, should I hire a quantity surveyor to work on my behalf to keep an eye on the build, or does the architect/engineer or builder do that for me?

Thanks

Victor

I used to work as a QS. The problem I found was that (a lot of) architects are artists, not technicians. This means that they can play loose with the rules. They can also play loose with your and the builder's money. Now, assuming that you don't have billions to throw at the house, you need to have someone that will make the architect play straight.

On of the biggest problems I found was that many architects, when they are the sole consultant, are fundamentally incapable of making a short coherent list of the works for the builder to price. It's either vast amounts of documentation or practically nothing.

Engineers are generally* much more competent (BEng > MArch > BArch). However, they tend to guess at certain things and only design them properly during the construction or leave the design of specific things to the contractor.

However, you need to balance the need to keep architects on the straight and narrow with the overall cost of consultants. If the job is less than €100,000, I would stick with one consultant. If they need specific advice on a topic, they can hire someone out of their own fee.

If it is €100,000-500,000, I would have two consultants, adding either a project manager or a QS.

Over €500,000, and assuming there is some complexity, having an architect, engineer and either project manager or a QS would be appropriate. However, having a single point of responsibility would be awesome.

* I would say be very wary of building services engineers, they seem to have no external awareness whatsoever.

Blue bull

Hey Victor.

Many thanks for your reply. The engineer has done his spec for the steel etc. Im not building any extensions or anything like that, it's all internal work. It is an old house, so hopefully there won't be too many surprises when the builders move in!! I am inclined to use a quantity surveyor, especially when it's not a standard build. It would be a small fraction of the overall cost, so, do it once, do it right..

Thanks again for your advice