The commercial department is tightly woven with every aspect of construction. The commercial team will collaborate between the designers, operations team, finance, planners, engineers, procurement, and legal department, just to name a few, exposing risks and benefitting from opportunities. At the heart of the commercial department is a Quantity Surveyor. A Quantity Surveyor will liaise with the estimating / procurement team to understand the project budget, and appreciate the design and engineering requirements by communicating with the design team to value engineer. The Quantity Surveyor will coordinate the activities with the programme to optimise the resources, this will get relayed to the operations team to confirm productivity and practicality. The Quantity Surveyor will assess the commercial liabilities, payment terms and exposures stipulated within the contract which is compiled by the legal department, they will also confer with the finance team to allocate accruals to correctly appreciate real time costs and ensure payments terms adhered. The commercial team is integral to a business within which the Quantity Surveyor plays a pivotal role.

The fundamental role of a Quantity Surveyor is to maximise the positive difference between cost and sale. To achieve this, the Quantity Surveyor must monitor and optimise resources and maximise sale, simply said but harder to appreciate. In order to maximise profit, you will need to understand the cost of resources and the inherent intricacies of these resources, after all, in order to manage something, you must understand what it is you are to manage.

Resources will include but are not limited to;

• Staff
• Labour
• Plant/Equipment
• Materials
• Subcontractors
• Time
• Risk

Dependant upon the industry, the resource type may differ, however they will mostly fall within the above categories. All the costs must be accounted for in order to truly appreciate the cost side of the equation.

The second part of the equation is the sale value, this is the total value of the deliverables. It is vital to appreciate that the value may increase / decrease as a result of change to the scope of deliverables. The scope will include the works undertaken as per the design and any agreed scope change during the life of the contract.

Of course, the profit is the difference between the total cost of works and the sales value of the scope of works, which is the true focus and the primary goal of the Quantity Surveyor.