When to bring a quantity surveyor onto a project

The question comes up on almost every first call. The honest answer is earlier than most people do it, and the reason is simple. The cheapest time to find out a project does not stack up is before you have spent money proving it.

At concept stage

You have sketches, a site, and an idea of what you want. What a quantity surveyor can give you here is a budget figure with the assumptions written down next to it.

That second part matters more than the number. An early estimate is only as good as what it assumes about ground conditions, structure, services and finish level. Stated openly, those assumptions become a list of things to confirm. Buried, they become the reason the figure moves by twenty percent later and nobody can explain why.

This is also the point where a project gets killed cheaply if it needs killing. Finding out at concept that the numbers do not work costs you a fee. Finding out after consent costs you the design, the consent, and the months.

At developed design

Now there is enough information for a proper elemental estimate, and enough time to do something about the answer. This is where value engineering earns its keep, because you are still choosing between options rather than unpicking decisions already made.

It is also when tender documentation gets prepared. Documentation is not administrative work. If builders are not pricing the same scope, the tender returns cannot be compared, and the lowest number on the page is usually just the one that missed the most.

During construction

Plenty of clients call us for the first time mid build. Something has gone sideways: a variation nobody priced before it was built, a payment claim that does not look right, a budget drifting with no clear cause.

We take those on and they are worth taking on. But it is worth being clear that a quantity surveyor engaged at this point is working with decisions that are already fixed. The influence available at concept stage is gone. What remains is control, which is still valuable, just narrower.

At final account

The last stage, and the one people most often try to handle themselves. Final accounts settle everything outstanding: measured work, variations, extensions of time, retentions. The gap between a well run final account and a badly run one is routinely six figures on a commercial project.

So what is the actual answer

Bring a quantity surveyor in when a wrong number would change your decision. For most developers that is concept stage. For a builder pricing a tender it is before the tender goes out, not after it is lost. For a homeowner it is before committing to a design you cannot afford to build.

The professional standards we work to are those promoted by the New Zealand Institute of Quantity Surveyors, and every engagement starts with a scope and a fee proposal so you know what you are getting before you commit.

Send through what you have, at whatever stage it is at, and we will tell you honestly what can be produced from it. Call Adam on 021 701 664.