by Patrick Venning
A report on the education and training policies required by the profession over the next decade has been prepared by the RICS Education and Membership Committee and has received the approval in principle of the institution’s General Council. It is being distributed for comment within the profession, but while this consultation takes place the development of a number of policy proposals will continue. Time is short. Why?
The profession is facing an imminent decline in the number of school leavers and it has to meet increasing competition for them. The Government is restricting its funding of further and higher education and it is becoming increasingly difficult for academic institutions to recruit and retain chartered surveyors on the academic staff. Increasing competition in areas previously accepted as the chartered surveyor’s own, new technology, and an increasing diversity of opportunity mean that the chartered surveyor must be able to compete intellectually, and that he must have the adequate support and management of his technical supporters. Competition from overseas is likely to increase — but, conversely, so are the opportunities for surveyors outside the UK.
The profession has to accept that the RICS is less and less a society of practising professionals offering services on somewhat narrow but widely accepted lines of activity. To survive, it has to be catholic both in the skills embraced and in how its members are employed. It has to be more of an active club for people who have surveying as a common interest — attracting members to itself because of its relevance to their needs, and not because it represents a widely accepted “meal ticket”.
But what is envisaged by the term “surveying”? Unlike its more conspicuous rivals for the favours of graduates — the law, accountancy and medicine — surveying has no strong recruiting image. It badly needs one, and it is recommended that resources are allocated by the RICS towards finding it. The proud parent of a potential candidate to surveying turns naturally to his accountant for financial or tax advice, to his lawyer for legal problems, and he knows where to go if he is sick. He does not have the same strong draw towards a surveyor for “matters real estate” — but he should. If this points to a less divisional approach to RICS careers and recruitment development, so be it. This quantity surveyor, for one, will accept it as necessary.
The profession’s education and training policies have worked well. Many hundreds of excellent new members join an expanding membership every year and, judging by many parameters, they are good and well respected — employment levels remain very high, earnings are good and, in view of the very large membership, complaints about competence are few. The entry is broad, embracing as it does highly qualified graduates and technician entrants. But it needs to be even broader.
In the present competitive environment the surveying profession has to have more appeal to, and flexibility in handling, graduates from other disciplines. Apart from thus widening the market for potential recruits, such people can bring an intellectual breath of fresh air to the way in which surveying develops. For this reason, the report suggests a three-stage qualification process:
Stage 1 — First degree.
Stage 2 — Further study (optional for candidates whose first degree is surveying-related).
Stage 3 — Two years of experience and training.
The existing graduate entry scheme for non-surveying graduates has not compared favourably with its equivalent in other professions — it is seen as insufficiently “user-friendly”, and it takes too long. The Stage 2 now envisaged for the non-surveying graduate has to be capable of being completed in about one year full-time or two years part-time, and the intelligent entrant from this route has to be able potentially to qualify as a chartered surveyor in a time-scale equivalent to the school leaver entering surveying directly (three years after first degree or six years from leaving school).
This means the establishment of surveying courses to meet this need. Five are already in the course of development at universities and polytechnics.
The 1970s idea of a two-tier profession has not worked satisfactorily. Prior to the time when the term “technician” became fashionable, the surveying profession was more unified across its levels of skill and attainment, for there was a wider range of entrant who all took the institution’s own examinations — those who did not qualify becoming the profession’s technicians without being so titled. At all levels people felt part of the whole team. But we live in a time of widespread ambition: it has not proved satisfactory to recruit back-up surveyors while giving them little incentive to achieve chartered status.
Was it ever sensible to expect representatives to attend careers conventions and say to less able youngsters: “Come and be a second-class unattached member of this splendid profession?” In addition, the widening range of surveying work, and the need for more and more skills not in themselves constituting sufficient of a core substance to merit full surveying recognition, point to the need for the profession now to ensure closer links with its technical support people. The Society of Surveying Technicians is the leading body representing them. Talks are taking place between it and the RICS to explore whether much closer links are desirable and attainable. The report suggests that they are, but of course the members of both the RICS and of the SST will have to approve a scheme at EGMs, and the rights of, and obligations on, the technical supporters will form a key part of any scheme worked out.
Little of fundamental difficulty is envisaged for quantity surveyors, whose technicians readily fall within Level 4 of the National Council for Vocational Qualifications’ attainment thinking — the highest level below professional status. The position is not so clear for general practice technicians, the great majority of whom are negotiators in the house agency field. While there is a widely held view in the RICS that the profession should retain effective control over agency in the face of the big battalions that are buying into the big firms, it has to be said that the NCVQ level appropriate to negotiators is not clear, and that there is therefore resistance among many RICS members to the idea of technicians having any form of membership within the institution. Is it possible, they say, to bring the technicians in, without reducing the status of the chartered surveyor as perceived by the general public? However, if the profession wants to bring its technical support staff into a closer relationship, it will not attract them without offering appropriate designatory letters.
What does the report say about training and the Test of Professional Competence? It recognises that, as the surveying coverage widens, so does it become progressively more difficult to devise specific tests that are fair to all candidates. The test, as an overall idea, must remain, for the widening academic qualifications offered to, and accepted by, the profession make it an evermore important final filter before qualification. It needs to be more flexible, and the report recognises that the structured interview preceded by a written submission, prepared in some disciplined environment, may be the answer to the need for more flexibility. Such tests are entirely successful in other occupations.
The profession has to be encouraged to take the training of its future generations far more seriously. Giving employers a more active role in the TPC process is envisaged as a distinct possibility. It is not ruled out that employing and training firms offer the institution structured training schemes for accreditation — similar to the process where colleges, asking to provide self-examining degree courses for exemption from the institution’s examinations, are visited and vetted by the Surveying Courses Board of the Education and Membership Committee.
If such accredited training schemes were to become accepted, they would confer the advantage that, in return for greater commitment, employers would have greater freedom to incorporate training programmes within their own workload. Whether it would ever be acceptable to the membership of the RICS as a whole, for training firms to be self-examining, is very doubtful!
All this is pointing to a fundamental truth. The surveying profession has to take the provision, education and training of its future members much more seriously. It must become more normally accepted that a higher level of resource is put in than has been the case in the recent past.
The intelligent and achieving school leaver expects effective support when he chooses his future — and surveying, if it is to survive, must meet this demand. The days are over when a stream of technically educated graduates came naturally into the profession. Many such do not now join the RICS, even if engaged in occupations hitherto thought totally relevant.
What does this mean in terms of actual demand placed on the institution and on employing members?
- Training has to be not only better, but better structured.
- Members have to get involved more in the teaching process at their local colleges. These colleges would welcome such input and, faced with their own resources problems, will be accommodating and helpful over timetables.
- Colleges have to be assisted to retain and increase the number of chartered surveyors on their academic staff. The decline in this area is potentially extremely damaging to the future of the profession. How can a college, faced with the sort of salary explosion that the recent prosperity and activity in surveying has generated, compete from a base of tightly controlled expenditure? Some surveying firms have put money into colleges in return for some favours regarding recruitment. This must be encouraged.
The profession has to mount an internal public relations exercise on the subject of its future membership. How about this slogan? “Wake up! The future of surveying depends on you!”
