The science of Quantik®

20 Nov 2024 • Tom Haley

Valuation matters: disruption

We continue our ‘valuation matters’ mini-series with a focus on disruption claims.

On the technical scale of a quantity surveyor’s duties, measuring resource efficiency and establishing losses caused by client events is probably one of the most complex tasks you will perform. It is very hard to do retrospectively because the records are not available, and doing it contemporaneously requires discipline and hard work.

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13 Nov 2024 • Tom Haley

Valuation matters: valuing variations

We continue this ‘valuation matters’ series with a focus on valuing variations.

In some ways this is a ‘bread and butter’ quantity surveying activity, but given how often differences in variation valuations are an issue in disputes, this guidance may help those who prepare or review variation valuations.

Maybe it will help you explain your position or, if you are on the receiving end, maybe it will guide the questions you should ask to understand the valuation and guide the issue towards resolution.

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6 Nov 2024 • Tom Haley

Valuation matters: prolongation costs

In this mini-series we will get very “QSy” again with a focus on valuation matters, in which I will cover some key construction valuation topics in these weekly, five-minute bite-sized articles.

We kick off the mini-series with prolongation costs. Your contract will determine specifically what you recover, how this is recovered, and what the recovery is labelled, but, in broad terms, prolongation costs are time-related losses and/or expenses caused by a critical path programme delay that extends the contractual completion date or a key date / sectional completion date.

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30 Oct 2024 • Tom Haley

Commercially managing design risk: key issues

In this mini-series, we are focused on design-related issues with a focus on offering some practical guidance on this subject from a quantity surveying / commercial management perspective.

This week’s article is the last in the mini-series and is a mop-up of other design issues that you should consider when commercially managing a construction project during the design process.

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23 Oct 2024 • Tom Haley

Commercially managing design risk: design coordination

In this mini-series, we are focused on design-related issues with a focus on offering some practical guidance on this subject from a quantity surveying / commercial management perspective.

This week’s article is focused on design coordination. There was a time when tracking design change was relatively straightforward. A drawing was revised and if it was issued by the client’s design team, you notified and valued the change and, hopefully, were paid.

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16 Oct 2024 • Tom Haley

Commercially managing design risk: design consultant appointments

In this mini-series, we are focused on design-related issues with a focus on offering some practical guidance on this subject from a quantity surveying / commercial management perspective.

This week’s article is focused on consultant appointments. When design was prepared by the client and issued to the contractor for construction, the contractor was not concerned with design consultant appointments. However, with the design and build boom, preparing and agreeing consultant appointments suddenly fell on the quantity surveyor’s lap as an extra thing to master.

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9 Oct 2024 • Tom Haley

Commercially managing design risk: extent of design responsibility

As a follow-on to our article about the Grenfell report, and some of the issues exposed by the report, this next mini-series will be focused on design related issues, and I will offer some practical guidance from a quantity surveying / commercial management perspective.

This week’s article is focused on the extent of design responsibility, which is, all too often, the root cause of many time and cost disputes. Your design responsibility obligations will, often, be limited, so knowing and expressing the extent of these will assist in the swift resolution of issues.

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2 Oct 2024 • Tom Haley

The demise of ISG: where do we go from here? (part 2)

In last week’s article I shared some of the themes arising from my post in which I questioned, following ISG’s demise, whether the traditional main contractor role is still viable. In this second article, I will share some of my own thoughts and reflections about construction industry changes that might lead us to a more prosperous and sustainable future.

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25 Sep 2024 • Tom Haley

The demise of ISG: where do we go from here? (part 1)

I was intending to write a mini-series about design matters, but given the recent demise of ISG, I decided to run a couple of articles on that issue before returning to design matters.

On the back of the news that ISG had entered administration, I posted on LinkedIn asking whether the traditional main contractor role is still viable. It prompted a healthy debate among industry professionals about the challenges we face in the industry.

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18 Sep 2024 • Tom Haley

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report

Coupled with the 9/11 attacks, the Grenfell fire was one of the JFK moments of my generation. I remember where I was standing and what was going through my mind when I saw the live feed on the TV. I just could not understand, even as a QS with basic building safety knowledge, how fire could spread so quickly and dangerously, how there were insufficient fire suppression measures, and why people had no means of escape. The thought of people being trapped inside that burning building was truly horrific.

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11 Sep 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Quantification and Costing (of Construction Works)

This week is our final article in this mini-series, and we close with quantification and costing (or construction work). This really is the competency for the quantity surveying purists with measurement right at the heart of it, and the competency where APC candidates should be looking to showcase their technical ability as a quantity surveyor.

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4 Sep 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Project Finance (Control and Reporting)

As the mid-September 2024 submission window for @RICS APC candidates sitting in 2024 Session Two is nearly upon us, we wanted to do a mini-series focused on technical competencies within the Quantity Surveying and Construction pathway guide.

We will do this by writing a five-minute article on each of the six core technical competencies which quantity surveyors form the pathway requirements. The intention is to give you some things to think about as you ready your experience record for submission. Whilst the article is RICS APC focused, the content will still be relevant to any construction professional looking to advance or refresh their knowledge in this area.

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28 Aug 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Procurement and Tendering

As the mid-September 2024 submission window for RICS APC candidates sitting in 2024 Session Two is nearly upon us, we wanted to do a mini-series focused on technical competencies within the Quantity Surveying and Construction pathway guide.

We will do this by writing a five-minute article on each of the six core technical competencies which quantity surveyors form the pathway requirements. The intention is to give you some things to think about as you ready your experience record for submission. Whilst the article is RICS APC focused, the content will still be relevant to any construction professional looking to advance or refresh their knowledge in this area.

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21 Aug 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Contract Practice

As the mid-September 2024 submission window for RICS APC candidates sitting in 2024 Session Two is nearly upon us, we wanted to do a mini-series focused on technical competencies within the Quantity Surveying and Construction pathway guide.

We will do this by writing a five-minute article on each of the six core technical competencies which quantity surveyors form the pathway requirements. The intention is to give you some things to think about as you ready your experience record for submission. Whilst the article is RICS APC focused, the content will still be relevant to any construction professional looking to advance or refresh their knowledge in this area.

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14 Aug 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Construction Technology and Environmental Services

We will do this by writing a five-minute article on each of the six core technical competencies which for the pathway requirements for quantity surveyors. The intention is to give you some things to think about as you ready your experience record for submission and prepare for interview. Whilst the article is RICS APC focused, the content will still be relevant to any construction professional looking to refresh or advance their knowledge in this area.

This week’s focus is construction technology and environmental services which is a competency that a is a critical enabler to other technical competencies: you need to be competent in construction technology if you are to be competent in quantifying and costing construction work.

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7 Aug 2024 • Tom Haley

RICS APC: Commercial Management (of Commercial Works)

As the mid-September 2024 submission window for RICS APC candidates sitting in 2024 Session Two is nearly upon us, we wanted to do a mini-series focused on technical competencies within the RICS APC Quantity Surveying and Construction pathway guide.

We will do this by writing a five-minute article on each of the six core technical competencies which form part of the pathway requirements for quantity surveyors. The intention is to give you some things to think about as you ready your experience record for submission and prepare for the assessment interview. Whilst the article is RICS APC focused, the content will still be relevant to any construction professional looking to advance or refresh their knowledge in this area.

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31 Jul 2024 • Nathan Bilton

Intelligent Use of Tech: Power Query

Power Query is a default plugin to Excel and is a tool used for data extraction, loading and transformation. You can use it to gather, clean and import data into excel, as well as automating the sorting process, without using code, so that you don’t have to spend time or effort manually inputting the same requests every time you upload data. This means you can gather data from a wide range of sources and use this in Excel without the need to convert the different file types yourself.

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24 Jul 2024 • Ibrahim Khan

Intelligent use of tech: Bluebeam

Ibrahim Khan, a Graduate Quantity Surveyor in the Quantik team, shares his initial experience using Bluebeam. As Ibrahim is relatively new to the construction industry, this article aims to share his learning journey, hoping to assist others are also new to the industry and encourage those who do not use digital measuring tools to give them a try. It also aims to promote communication with existing users who might be open to share their experiences.

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17 Jul 2024 • Tom Haley

Intelligent use of tech: proofreading

This week we focus on a proofreading tool, Writefull. Whilst it doesn’t have the glitz and glamour of ChatGPT, we spend a lot of time writing (or typing) and our written word is a reflection of you. Given the amount of written word that exits, it is important to stand out by being clear and concise with everything you produce: you should always strive for perfection.

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11 Jul 2024 • Nathan Bilton & Tom Haley

Intelligent use of tech: ChatGPT's Excel Plug-In

When I wanted to achieve a task and was not sure if a formula existed, or needed support writing a long formula, I ask ChatGPT, and by describing what I would like to achieve, it either provides the answer or gives me enough of the answer for me to finish it

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3 Jul 2024 • Tom Haley

Maximising construction project cash flow: top tips

The drafting in current contracts will be based on the statutory Construction Act provisions with, often, some wild and wonderful amendments to those provisions. A trend I have noticed over the last ten years is, if I was being cynical, drafting which deliberately over complicates what should be a relatively simple process.

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26 Jun 2024 • Tom Haley

Avoiding financial failure: the existential threat of one problem project

It only takes one bad construction contract to sink a construction business.

In this The science of Quantik® article we give a QS's perspective on how one bad project has the potential to destabilise your business and give some tips on tendering, contracts, and financial control.

The article continues our miniseries focused on financial issues facing contracting businesses in the UK construction industry.

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19 Jun 2024 • Tom Haley

Guarding against financial failure: some practical guidance

Given the fragmented nature of the construction supply chain, this could be quite a broad area, so I have focused the article on main contractors and subcontractors because this tends to be the most critical interface when it comes to financial failure.

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12 Jun 2024 • Tom Haley

A QS perspective: lessons to be learned from Carillion’s demise

The demise of Carillion on 15 January 2018 was, and for many probably still is, a highly emotive and political issue.

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5 Jun 2024 • Tom Haley

Insolvency in the construction industry: the macro issues

Did you know that the construction industry has the highest insolvency rate of any industry in the UK economy, with more than 4,000 insolvencies in 2023?

In our next The science of Quantik® article mini-series we will focus on financial issues facing contracting businesses in the UK construction industry.

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29 May 2024 • Tom Haley

Bringing The science of Quantik® to you

Do our articles resonate with a challenge you are experiencing? Do you feel the need to raise standards in your commercial team, broaden commercial awareness in your delivery team, explore how you might deal with a complicated commercial issue, or initiate a conversation in your leadership team about improving commercial performance in your business?

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24 May 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: project financial reporting

Given the perilous state of financial performance in the construction industry, accurate and reliable project financial reporting has never been more important. In this article, I will share my thoughts on why you do them, the rules you are required to follow, the importance of revenue and share some top tips.

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15 May 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: valuing variations

If you need to persuade someone that you are entitled to a change under the contract, do not underestimate what needs to be done to prove this: unfortunately saying it is a change, and repeating that over and over, won’t hit the mark. Instead, what you need to do is establish what has changed by reference to a variation clause in the contract and by reference to a document in the contract showing the agreed scope.

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10 May 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: change control

That may have been possible when design and programme control was staged and linear but, in the technological age where changes are more dynamic and occurring every minute of every day, the old approaches are just not workable anymore.

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1 May 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: cost control

What you are looking to achieve is an outturn cost projection that aligns with the scope, programme, rates, and risk profile, and gives you information that indicates where cost expenditure might be, or is, ahead of budget so that action can be taken to address the issue causing the potential to overspend.

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24 Apr 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: applications for payment

Why do we do it? Yes, often compliance with the contract is the first answer, but that only scratches the ‘why’ surface. The preparation of an application for payment is more than an administrative process where numbers are mechanically put together and thrown over to the client’s quantity surveyor to do the same.

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17 Apr 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: Procurement

If you want the procurement process to run smoothly, you need to enable it to happen – it will not happen by chance or good fortune.

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10 Apr 2024 • Tom Haley

Quantity surveying fundamentals: managing the budget

The common mistake I see is a starting budget that either doesn’t align with the contract sum (i.e. the bottom-line number is different), or the components of the budget don’t align with components of the contract sum (e.g. there is an amount of £1m for preliminaries in the contract sum but the starting point for the budget is £2m).

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27 Mar 2024 • Tom Haley

Going beyond the numbers: the inspiration behind The science of Quantik™

We started with a construction productivity bang, and this was quickly followed with articles on data science and generative AI. Then the lightbulb came on and I realised that explaining the inspiration behind the articles might be a good article topic in itself; so here goes!

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20 Mar 2024 • Tom Haley

AI x QS = Opportunities

For me, this is where the biggest opportunity exists. The volume of documents which are created for a tender process between contractor and employer and then used again for contractor to subcontractor tenders is well beyond manageable.

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13 Mar 2024 • Tom Haley

Navigating the new world: a QS's guide to generative AI tools

It’s fair to say that there are hundreds of generative AI tools available so, in the interests of your time and my sanity, I have focused on the three that I think QS’s may use the most both now and in the future. These are Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot and Adobe AI Assistant.

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6 Mar 2024 • Tom Haley

The rise of machine learning: the risks

The most obvious risk is the LLM’s ability to train itself, without human prompt, meaning the content cannot be fully verified before it is relied upon. An example would be two conflicting data sets and the LLM deciding which it considers to be the most authoritative. Particularly in a business setting, where the stakes are often high, this is concerning and raises questions about the accuracy of content created which is drawn from internet information contaminated with fake news.

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28 Feb 2024 • Tom Haley

The rise of machine learning: how generative AI works

The purpose of this generative AI mini-series is to summarise research I have undertaken in a concise and easy-to-understand way. This first article in the mini-series focuses on how generative AI, referred to as Large Language Models

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21 Feb 2024 • Tom Haley

My data science inspiration

When I started as a trainee quantity surveyor in 2003, this interest persisted as I quickly realised that being agile with technology gave me an advantage in everything I did. Whether it was agreeing a variation valuation, a subcontractor’s monthly payment certificate or preparing reports for management,

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14 Feb 2024 • Tom Haley

Is the future of quantity surveying now?

I wanted to share some reflections on a recent Docusign report (2023 Digital Maturity) I read. The findings from the research provide evidence that the groundswell of change is happening now, and businesses need to adapt to ensure they attract and retain talent.

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7 Feb 2024 • Tom Haley

A dispute free future: does data science hold the key?

In a recent meeting, with the group commercial director of a leading specialist façade subcontractor, we were reflecting on a meeting we had just attended. When discussing how the meeting could have been better, we shared a view

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31 Jan 2024 • Tom Haley

Thrive or die: the necessary QS evolution

In this article we turn the dial slightly and focus on issues relating to #thefutureofquantitysurveying and a subject which is never far from my mind; the existential threat posed to QS's if we not do not embrace technology and the opportunity to thrive if we do.

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24 Jan 2024 • Tom Haley

Top three techniques to improve your impact

These are not hacks and I have left the intelligent use of technology to one side as it will be covered more extensively in future articles. Instead, the focus is on personal development and how practicing these three techniques will improve your impact and productivity.

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17 Jan 2024 • Tom Haley

Rethinking the currency of construction productivity

In most businesses financial metrics (e.g. profitability) are the de facto measure of productivity. However, these are misleading metrics and productivity measures need to focus on hours as the currency rather than financial information which tends to be polluted with numerous factors that are not productivity related (a person’s opinion, market inflation, design development etc).

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10 Jan 2024 • Tom Haley

Construction productivity: measuring the unmeasurable

In this article I will set parts of my experience against a relevant recent published by the RICS titled “RICS Construction productivity report 2023”. The report was the output of answers given in the third quarter of the RICS Global Construction Monitor (GCM) survey 2022 where four productivity related questions were added.

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3 Jan 2024 • Tom Haley

The great construction productivity conundrum

The whole economy achieved, between 1997 and 2020, a productivity improvement of 25% whereas the construction industry’s productivity has deteriorated by 10%; a 35% net deterioration (Figure 1).

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30 Dec 2023 • Tom Haley

AI x QS = Opportunities

I will share how I consider LLM’s, and other forms of generative AI might help quantity surveyors improve their productivity and performance.

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28 Dec 2023 • Tom Haley

The rise of machine learning

Are you excitedly redesigning your work methods ready to ride the ChatGPT wave, bunkering down ready for the existential threat, or simply sat waiting to see how all the drama unfolds?

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15 Dec 2023 • Tom Haley

Where did all the quantities go?

I deal with the resolution of some complex quantum issues, both as advocate and expert, and one of the questions that I am always asking when investigating an issue is “what are the quantities?

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6 Dec 2023 • Tom Haley

Contra charges: the scourge of cash flow in the construction industry?

I get that contractors need to make deductions when a subcontractor causes them to incur cost (commonly known as a ‘contra charge’)

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28 Nov 2023 • Tom Haley

RICS APC assessments

It is a real privilege to be part of the APC assessment process. I always find the submissions to be interesting and reading the case studies gets me thinking about the issue the candidate faced, and I learn from that process.

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9 Nov 2023 • Tom Haley

How digitally forward is your organisation?

I recently came across a Docusign report (2023 Digital Maturity Report) which benchmarks attitudes and perceptions to digital maturity among 1,800 business decision makers in the UK and Europe.

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18 Oct 2023 • Tom Haley

What is strategy?

A question I hadn’t fully considered until I came across this article. Admittedly, I found the theory of the article tough going, but reflecting on the content got me thinking about the absence of strategy in the construction industry.

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12 Jun 2023 • Tom Haley

"Just learn how to get stuff done"

I couldn't have said it better, Mr Obama!

In my view, as an industry, there are occasions where we seem to spend a lot of time talking about problems, or debating what the problem is, where this time would be better invested in getting on with solving the problem.

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26 May 2023 • Tom Haley

Net zero carbon: cement

If the cement industry was a country, it would be the third-biggest carbon-dioxide polluter after China and America.

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