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Quantity surveying

Arup provides cost management and quantity surveying (QS) services on a vast range of construction projects, including buildings, civil engineering, industrial, infrastructure and major highways projects.

Arup provides cost management and quantity surveying (QS) services on a vast range of construction projects, including buildings, civil engineering, industrial, infrastructure and major highways projects.

The firm's QS specialists are an integral part of the design and project management team on projects of all sizes and levels of complexity.

What sets Arup apart is that its cost managers and quantity surveyors are fully integrated into the engineering environment to provide an effective means of achieving the client's objectives. They contribute to projects with in-depth knowledge of built environment design and the concerns of designers and clients. They share the firm's commitment to sustainable development, project performance and life-cycle analysis.

Design decisions and cost control

The capital cost of a construction project is largely determined by decisions made by the client with their design team. The best outcomes are possible when each decision on the scope or quality of the project is made in the full knowledge of its impact on cost and the value that it provides to the client’s business.

Arup's teams know that effective cost management comes from total integration into the design process. As full members of the project team, they use proven procedures and systems designed to give full access to current information on the budget and forecast cost to completion, thereby helping to shape the evolving design to match the client’s aspirations.

Cost control and value management

Cost planning and value management include the evaluation of alternative design against the client’s value criteria for function, quality and durability. The evaluation techniques enable the design team to optimise the design to fit within the client's budget.

Cost control is achieved through formal change control procedures and regular cost reporting. This is designed to give up to-date cost information to the client and the designers and to provide a full audit trail of changes against an approved budget.

Procurement, tendering and contract administration

Arup's project and cost management team includes experienced quantity surveyors based around the world. Their services range from project conception to design development and include advice on procurement and tendering methodologies, management of the procurement process from tenderer selection through tender evaluation to contract award, and post-contract administration, leading to the agreement of the final account, including the resolution of potential contractual disputes.

Knowledge sharing through the firm's internal networks allows resources and experience to be drawn from many locations around the firm to support and supplement core teams.