Developing a graduate competency mapping benchmark for quantity surveying competencies

An investigation into the views of industry and academia on Quantity Surveying (QS) education revealed that there is a considerable gap in the expectation of graduate competency and the achievement of it. It identified the need for deeper investigation into the root causes of this gap between expectation and provision of QS competencies. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) QS competencies and their mapping to four RICS accredited QS programme specifications taken as case studies. The mapping is detailed and carried out in a dual vector scale matrix encompassing the breadth and depth of achievement of competencies. The mapping case studies form the basis for the development of a conceptual benchmark for achievement of graduate competencies. The detailed mapping exercise analyses the level of mapping of individual module specifications of RICS accredited programmes to the three levels of achievement of competencies specified by the RICS. The research purports to use an industry -academia industry forum to evaluate the conceptual benchmark in order to adjust and ratify the final benchmark values. The benchmark will define the threshold levels at which all competencies need to be achieved by graduate quantity surveyors.