Quantity surveyor — skills, knowledge and links

How it connects#

O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Logistics Engineers · Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians · Construction Managers · Industrial Engineers · Architectural and Engineering Managers · Architectural and Civil Drafters · Project Management Specialists

In the official classification#

In Europe, internationally and in Singapore

What O*NET rates highest#

From O*NET 13-1051.00 (Cost Estimators). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.

Each task in O*NET's terms#

O*NET describes work as detailed activities. Each of this page's 6 tasks is matched only against the activities O*NET lists for this occupation, with a stated fit; 6 match at least one. The alignment and its fit are this site's judgement, made task by task by its AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26; O*NET does not align tasks like ours. The activity names are O*NET's, the translations ours.

• Measuring quantities
  Estimate costs of goods or services.O*NET's activity is broader · Making Decisions and Solving Problems · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Insurance claims handler
• Estimating and cost planning
  Estimate costs of goods or services.O*NET's activity is broader · Making Decisions and Solving Problems · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Insurance claims handler
  Assess the cost effectiveness of products, projects, or services.covers part of this task · Judging the Qualities of Objects, Services, or People · O*NET 31.0
• Bills of quantities and tender documents
  Prepare financial documents.O*NET's activity is broader · Documenting/Recording Information · O*NET 31.0
• Valuing work done and pricing changes
  Monitor financial indicators.O*NET's activity is broader · Monitoring Processes, Materials, or Surroundings · O*NET 31.0
  Collect data about project sites.covers part of this task · Getting Information · O*NET 31.0
• Claims and disputes
  Negotiate agreements to resolve disputes.O*NET's activity is broader · Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others · O*NET 31.0
  Confer with others about financial matters.O*NET's activity is broader · Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others · O*NET 31.0
• Whole-life cost and carbon
  Assess the cost effectiveness of products, projects, or services.O*NET's activity is broader · Judging the Qualities of Objects, Services, or People · O*NET 31.0

Tasks O*NET proposes to add#

O*NET's analysts propose new or reworded task statements for future data collection, drawing on what surveyed workers write in, research into new technologies and professional associations. They are candidates, not yet part of the rated task list, and they say nothing about whether automation is involved. This site does not fold them into its own task judgements.

• Use remote sensing technologies or drones to evaluate site conditions when in-person visits are not feasible.New task · 2025-05 · source: AI/SME (O*NET's label) · O*NET 31.0

Our task judgements#

Sources and rules#

• Each block says where it comes from: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, the European ESCO classification and its official crosswalk to O*NET, the ILO's ISCO-08, Singapore's SSOC 2024, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
• O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
• The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
• The ESCO and ISCO-08 fits are derived mechanically from the official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk; where we override it, we say why in our data (for example, the crosswalk pairs radiologists with radiographers, which is a different job). The SSOC 2024 fit is our reading of the Singapore Department of Statistics' own titles and definitions. Official names are shown as their publishers write them; we do not translate them.
• Each task is matched only against the detailed work activities O*NET lists for the codes this page maps to. Where nothing fits, the page says why instead of forcing a match: work O*NET does not describe yet (used only for tasks we judge to be emerging), or nothing in O*NET's list for this occupation. An alignment never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
• Rules are read only from this site's verified records. A rule's official name must appear word for word in a record that reads it, so no name is made up; a policy mandate is read only as 'must', 'must not' or 'funds', because 'should' and 'in principle' are not a mandate. Reading a rule never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
• How these pieces fit together — objects, links and the actions that change them — is drawn as one diagram: The VOLO ontology
• ESCO (European Commission), occupation records from the ESCO API; CC BY 4.0. ESCO–O*NET crosswalk, ESCO Secretariat with the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA, version 1 (Sep 2022), O*NET-SOC 2019 ↔ ESCO v1.1.0; CC BY 4.0. Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Standard Occupational Classification 2024 and its correspondence with ISCO-08.
• O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.