Constructing a building information modelling (BIM) execution plan for quantity surveying practice

Abstract

The quantity surveyor is an essential part of every major construction project, estimating costs, tendering documents and payments, and informing clients’ and other project managers’ decision-making during the construction lifecycle. However, existing quantity surveying (QS) procedure relies on tedious calculation and faces intense time pressures to turnaround work, which exacerbate the likelihood of circulating inaccurate estimates. Building Information Modelling (BIM) allows the virtual linking of cost to design elements, which enables semi-automatic computation of overall cost at various project stages and has the potential to enhance both the working efficiency and accuracy of QS tasks. Given the growing interest in implementing BIM into daily QS practice, this paper outlines a comprehensive BIM execution plan around QS. After addressing the benefits and pitfalls that may arise at each stage in the construction lifecycle, a description and analysis of a real-life application of QS-BIM is provided. The case’s BIM software, embedded with local measurement rules, helped produce considerably precise quantity take-offs.