Page 13 - W M Donald Newsletter - Edition Nine

Q How did you get started in quantity surveying?
A From school I served a 5-year apprenticeship in a professional office practice, attending day release and evening classes, and I qualified in 1969. Pre-decimalisation surveyors calculated in duodecimals i.e. twelfths: 12 inches to the foot and 12 pennies to the shilling. Bills of quantities in the 1960’s often had tendered rates in halfpence.
Try calculating a bill quantity length of 4yds 2ft 11ins by a unit rate of 1 shilling 11 and a half-pence per yard! Although we knew how to calculate these manually, comptometers did the real hard work.
The office practice was on the third floor of 214 Union Street, Aberdeen, and two coal fires were the only source of heating. Myself and the other first year apprentice shovelled and fetched the coal buckets from the cellar, two floors below street level on Union Street, first lighting and then stoking the flames five and a half days every winter week. First year wages were £7 per month and we couldn’t wait for the following year’s apprentices to start! After qualifying, I moved to the other side of the fence and started working for contractors.
Q The working conditions you have just described are very different from the new W M Donald offices!
A They certainly are. The new offices are amazing. A wonderful work environment, very high tech and - oh my God – soon to be paper-free! That means trouble for me – what will I do with all my HB pencils! Taking off quantities from a set of scale drawings was how I was taught. The office surveyors now use the Cost X take-off system which retrieves the same quantities in 10% of the time. Move over Jim!
Q But QS work is not just about achieving accurate quantities for a contract is it.
A Absolutely not. The job of the commercial surveyor is the same now as it has always been: know the conditions of contract and the tender; know the site and the men working on the site; speak to the men on the site and ask exactly what they have been doing in the seven days since you last saw them. What has proved difficult? Are there any unusual or special circumstances which made the task difficult? Does our tendered rate for the task include these unusual or special circumstances? If it doesn’t, there is a potential variation against what was priced for. It is the contract surveyor’s remit to ensure the firm is paid the proper value for the work the men are carrying out on site.
One further thing. The patter of tiny feet can still occasionally be heard in these beautiful offices. It’s the grandchildren now of course!
Climbing Nepal’s highest trekking peak
Ian Gray, Operations Manager, has just returned from the Himalayas after trekking to Mera North. At 6476m, Mera North is Nepal’s highest trekking peak and less than 2,500m below Everest which is visible from the summit:
‘It was an amazing adventure. From the beautiful unfettered chaos of Kathmandu to the unbelievable cold of the glacier: we set out at 2am on summit day. The Sherpas on the trip were fantastic people. How they are able to carry such extraordinary weights at that altitude is awe-inspiring.
Acclimatising to the altitude is a big challenge as is, for a carnivore like me at least, living on a vegetable diet. We had Spam one day and it was as good as steak! The massive logistics costs make consumer products very expensive - £4 for a Snickers, £7 for a tube of Pringles – but they are such a luxury that you don’t begrudge it.
The trip is not for those that obsess about personal hygiene. We had one shower in two weeks – a trickle of water at best – and the less said about the toilets the better!’
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