It is a well-worn piece of advice for life that education should not stop when you leave school. Or university. Or when you go to work. Or almost ever, in fact.
Continuing education is a lifelong quest, say its advocates, and this doctrine of self-improvement has become enshrined in the three letters CPD – continuous professional development – promoted by the industry’s human resources departments up and down the land.
All of which should make Samuel Smiles, author of the Victorian best-seller Self-Help, rest even happier in his grave. His philosophy of self-education as a means of improvement has been taken very much to heart by the commercial world.
This includes the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), which insists that its members undertake a minimum of 20 hours’ study a year, divided into “formal” and “informal” study.
Formal means a seminar or other similar event intended to have “learning outcomes”, according to RICS’ global director of training, Pierpaolo Franco. Informal study, on the other hand, might include some mentoring in your place of work or even just reading an article that updates your knowledge of the regulations.
It is all fairly loosely policed, but RICS members are required to fill out a form every year, listing the content of their 20 hours’ study. If they don’t do this, it is followed up, Franco says.
Maintaining standards
“There are very good reasons for this,” he says. “Keeping up to date with the latest legislation and technology ensures people can do their job properly and we want to ensure standards are maintained globally.”
The 20 hours-a-year rule may be modest (less than half an hour a week, on average) but it works quite well, Franco says. He points out that the RICS now has 85% compliance among its members.
And if you’re thinking that 15% non-compliance is rather high for such a gentle requirement, then bear in mind there are some exemptions to the training requirement. Retired RICS members are not required to do it, for instance, and some people in very senior roles are left to police their own personal development.
For those that do fail to do their 20 hours, or to fill in the form recording the fact that they have, the non-compliance procedures are hardly draconian. Members who have not done what they should are “invited” to put things right, Franco says.
Choice of courses
More interesting, perhaps, is the type of training that surveyors can choose from the many courses offered by the RICS and others. There is no obligation on RICS members to do RICS courses, but many do.
The courses can be either face-to-face or online and cover a huge range of subjects, although demand does vary depending on changes in the profession and the economy.
RICS courses available online include one-hour briefings for £15 on subjects such as amendments to the Construction Act or “conflicts of interest”. Longer courses include a Certificate in Corporate Real Estate and Facilities Management, which involves 200 hours’ study and costs £895 plus VAT for members and £100 more for non-members. If surveyors want to expand their skills, they will almost certainly find something on the RICS site, Franco says.
One trend in recent years, he says, is that more surveyors have opted for courses in cost analysis and project management, which might be a reflection of the pressures and demands of economies in recession.
There is also a move by surveyors to try to broaden their skills and become more “holistic”, Franco says. For example, a valuer who wants to do more work in development might take a relevant course.
But for many, the basic usefulness of CPD is to keep up with changes in the rules covering the area in which they work – in planning, for example.
Mark Lawson, partner in the Buying Solution, Knight Frank’s buying agent subsidiary, says: “It is really important to keep up with changes to legislation, particularly with planning, where the rules change dramatically and frequently. We have to be on top of that and the 20-hour requirement is a good way of doing so.”
What kind of training?
What type of training property professionals undertake depends very much on their particular job and the industry level in which they operate.
Headhunter Jonathan Krogdahl, managing director of Ewan Partners, specialists in executive recruitment for the property world, is ambivalent about the importance of CPD.
“My first thought is that I waver between saying ‘yes, it’s very important’ and ‘no, it’s not important at all’,” he says.
Krogdahl’s point is that formal learning – doing a training course – is less important for more senior people.
He explains: “For them, what matters most is what I would call professional learning, at events and conferences. What they really benefit from is listening to their peers. It’s more about learning from each other than a teacher/student relationship.”
Krogdahl says different countries have different attitudes to formal learning.
“In this country formalised learning is not seen as important as experience,” he says.
What can count most for higher-level jobs is not so much what formal learning you have undertaken, but the “size, scope and nature” of the jobs you have already done, Krogdahl says.
So perhaps the best way to keep your career progressing as you probably want it to is to do exactly what the RICS 20-hour rule suggests. Make part of your continuing education formal, part of it informal, and top it all up constantly by learning from those around you.
