Tech, innovation key to success in quantity surveying profession – President

The President of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN), Murtala Aliyu has said technology and innovation are key to success in the profession. He also spoke about what the board is doing to maintain standards and ethical conduct among members. Excerpts: As a regulatory body, what have you been doing to ensure ethical […]

The President of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN), Murtala Aliyu has said technology and innovation are key to success in the profession. He also spoke about what the board is doing to maintain standards and ethical conduct among members. Excerpts:

As a regulatory body, what have you been doing to ensure ethical and professional conduct of Quantity Surveyors who have a key role to play in the construction sector and infrastructural development of the country?

Every profession has ethical boundaries under which it should operate. One of the major roles of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRB) is to ensure ethical conformity to the manner of practicing the profession in Nigeria. The board has some organs. When somebody is coming in fresh to become a quantity surveyor, he/she needs to meet some requirements. The first requirement is a degree or Higher National Diploma in Quantity Survey. He/she must have passed the professional exams of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors, and must have applied to be licensed. The person also has to undergo interview because the profession is multifaceted, and we have various dealings.

While interviewing people during licensing, we try to limit questions to the specific areas of particular competence. For instance, we do not ask questions outside the scope of the competence. At the end of the day, the board will hold the professionals responsible for whatever might happen. This is how we control licensed people. The moment a professional becomes licensed, every year he/she must renew the license, and in renewing the license, there is compulsory certification and competence training like the one we are going to have during the forthcoming assembly.  But if for any reason you missed this, you must attend a similar programme organised by the National Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS).

We also have monitoring and enforcement unit. We go round to find out how quantity surveyors who are on projects conduct themselves, or when we receive report of someone doing something wrong, we try to bring it to the enforcement desk. We have a disciplinary committee where if somebody has an issue, he/she will face the committee for probe.

There is also a committee that is responsible for assessment. They interact with the professionals to ascertain the truth of the allegations and forward it to the disciplinary committee. The disciplinary committee can suspend license of a member if they are found guilty. This is how we maintain the ethical standard.

You will have your 2020 Annual Assembly this week, what are the highlights of the programme?

Like every profession, technology and innovations are disrupting things. We have come a long way from manual, mechanical and electronic way of doing things, and now artificial intelligence is taking over in quite a number of functions in the construction industry. Every skill is exposed to the dangers of technology now. It is a dialogue to inform ourselves about the situation in technological development. Automation is reducing our work in many aspects. This is dialogue with technology to up scale the knowledge of our members and also urge them to continue updating their knowledge.

There is a sociologist, Alvin Toffler, who said “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn,”

The process will be continuous. Every year, we are going to engage in similar programmes. The National Institute of Quantity Surveyors is also rebranding along the lines of technology and innovations.

How many new professionals are you expecting to induct?

We are planning to induct 200. We have done some earlier this year. Ordinarily, it happens once in a year but because we have a backlog and we don’t want people to wait for a year to be registered.

If you register the forthcoming batch, that will add up to how many registered quantity surveyors?

We have 3,800 registered quantity surveyors and if we add the 200 we are planning to register it will amount to more than 4,000. However, the number of qualified quantity surveyors from the National Institute of Quantity Surveyors is about 6,000, which higher than the registered ones because there are professionally trained quantity surveyors who have not been registered.

As a developing economy where there is enough space for the construction industry to grow,  do you think this number is enough or there are gaps?

Of course this number is not enough but the pleasant thing is that the rate of increase is good.  Before, in a year, we used to register 30-100 but since I became the president of the board which is 2 years and half ago, we have registered and licensed almost a thousand. This means that within the period of three years, we have reached almost a quarter of the existing number. We are hoping that the subsequent number will increase.

The number of 4,000 is far below expectation of the economy but you will also discover that even the 4,000 are not fully engaged. The unfortunate thing is that the professionals are not utilized.

Secondly, because of the level of demand we have the academic institutions that absorb some of the trained professionals to go back to the academia and tutor in universities and polytechnics. We also have the federal, state and local government civil service also absorbing some, ministries, agencies, consultancy services, firms and the military all require the services of quantity surveyors.

For instance, if all local governments engage 1 quantity surveyor, you will find out that they will go away with almost 1/4  of the total number of registered quantity surveyors we have. There is a need to scale up because there is demand and the demand is going to be continuous, but the strength of the economy is low and the professionals are not utilized as they should be; you find out that they are under engaged.

When you stand before your members on Wednesday, what will you flaunt as your achievement as the president of the board?

First of all, it is the stability in the profession. When we came in, quite a number of professionals were in chaos. Some were in courts dragging each other on some matters. Now, under my watch the quantity survey profession is calm and the board and the institute are relating quietly well.

Secondly, we have been exploring ways to make things easier to quantity surveyors in practice. We are also reaching out to various arms of government by showing the importance of the need to serve with quantity surveyors. As I am talking to you, the Niger-Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has requested that we recommend 27 quantity surveyors to participate in auditing the activities of the commission.

The ICPC has asked the institute to provide them with quite a number of quantity surveyors in assessing the quality of constituency projects across the country.

The EFCC has also engaged us a few times to ensure that we audit some of their road projects to ensure conformity to value of money. We are working with Nigerian Raw Materials Research and Exploration Agency (NRMRE), National Board for Building Roads Research Institute (NBBRRI) and Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON).

We reached out to them and now we are working with them. One of the things we have achieved is to further expose the quantity survey profession to the public to create a dialogue between the profession and the public.

At this juncture that you are about bringing new professionals on board, what will you be doing to ensure that new members explore technology and innovations in ensuring quality in the construction industry?

The young quantity surveyors are going to have their forum on Thursday and what we do is to catch them when they are in the training institution to make up the Young Quantity Surveyors Forum but the leadership is driven by those that are qualified. We have an interface among ourselves where we share experiences gained through the profession.

They also share their own capacities and capabilities in terms of training and practice. This collaboration works. If architects use AutoCad to design his work, we also need to anchor into the same innovation to be able to appreciate his designs. There is an application called Building Information Modelling (BIM). It is an integral software where all the stakeholders within a particular project can relate to each other. It is mandatory for a professional to have knowledge of the BIM before qualifying.  What we are doing is to expand the relationship by going beyond the knowledge of BIM because the BIM itself is evolving.