Fustered by the increasing conflict in the sector, the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS) has called for synergy among built environment professionals to tackle real estate challenges.
The National President of NIQS, Obafemi Onashile who made the call at the 2017 Dinner/awards night organized by the Lagos Chapter of NIQS, lamented that the way the industry is been run currently, which has hindered the industry growth.
He urged all experts to come together to channel a pact for more effectiveness and functionality. “We should rally round with other professionals in the industry towards refining the sector. For now, building cost control is still not fully optimized, quality control is becoming an issue in our industry and these are beyond one profession or the other.
“We are advising that we should all come together to uplift our industry. Quantity surveyors are making impact although still very limited however, we have made impact in building cost control but the procurement in construction industry is beyond building alone, we are talking about civil engineering works, power construction works and engineering installations among others”, he stated.
Onashile said that the Bureau of Public Procurement in the country is headed by a quantity surveyor, adding that the person is making good impact for better procurement control at the federal level. For him, there would be improvement in public procurement process when the bill, which is assented to by president Muhammadu Buhari
Speaking on membership drive and plans to increase the impact of the institute, he said; “Within our profession, the engineers, they are up to 100,000, the architects are about the same in number but to maintain our relevance, we need to increase our number. There are over 300,000 lawyers in the country and so when they cough, the whole nation sneezes.
“We shall be looking at various options of increasing our number; career counseling and sensitization at secondary school level, sooner or later, we are going to make quantity surveying open to any graduate who would come in and do the professional exams to get qualified. This will prevent us from becoming an endangered species.”
Lagos State Chapter Chairman, Bamidele Mafimidiwo said the awareness of the profession in the society is increasing stressing that with the federal government procurement Act, it would enforce probity in the construction sector because when quantity surveyors are in strategic positions in construction, people tend to get value for projects, save costs and deliver more effective service.
