LO
DeploymentCognitive automation2024-01-01
RICS found that about 48% of construction professionals exchange data through digital models for quantity take-off and cost estimating — up from 46% in 2021 — while 24% share none this way
Quantity surveyoroccupation page →
Event date / reported
2024-01-01 · reported 2024-11-01
Evidence stage
DeploymentAn employer has put it into production. Can move the baseline — weighted by scale and how similar the setting is.
Tasks this bears on
Measuring quantities
Working out how much concrete, steel, brickwork, finishes and services a design needs — the take-off every estimate rests on.
Automating✓ Evidence-backed
Estimating and cost planning
Pricing a design at each stage, setting and managing a budget, and advising the client on what a change will cost before it is made.
Being augmented✓ Evidence-backed
Where this applies
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' own research report, published in November 2024 (the month is given, not a day), from digitalisation questions in its Q4 2023 Global Construction Monitor, a survey of thousands of construction professionals that concluded in January 2024; 51% of respondents were in Asia Pacific. It reports that approximately 48% of respondents provide and receive data via digital models for quantity take-off and cost estimating, the highest of the functions asked about, compared with 46% in the 2022 and 2021 surveys, and that 24% do not share data for this function. Asked whether their organisation consistently uses processes driven by BIM or digital twins for cost estimation, prediction, planning and control, 15% said on all projects, 23% on most and 37% on none. It measures model-based working, not artificial intelligence, and says nothing about how many surveyors a project needs.
What this means
In the profession's own survey, working from digital models is now how about half of construction professionals handle take-off and estimating data — and that share has hardly moved in three years. For a quantity surveyor the measuring end of the job is changing, but slowly and unevenly: many firms still measure from drawings, and a surveyor who can do both, and check what a model contains, holds the advantage.
What it does not yet show
It measures data exchange and model-driven processes, not quantities produced without a surveyor, not the use of artificial intelligence, and not any change in how many surveyors firms employ; most respondents are in Asia Pacific.
What you can check
Open RICS's Digitalisation in construction report 2024 and read Figure 3 (consistent use of digitalisation for cost estimation) and the paragraph under Figure 13 on data sharing for quantity take-off and cost estimating ('approximately 48% of global respondents').
Does it change the assessment?
No. The impact index is never moved by a single event. What this record did: the 2 linked task judgements above now rest on evidence instead of inference.
Source
RICS — Digitalisation in construction report 2024 (November 2024), from the Q4 2023 RICS Global Construction Monitor · verified 2026-09-26 · Claude (VOLO agent) · interpreted 2026-09-26 · Claude (VOLO agent)
Primary source — published by the party that did this, or the authority of record. No co-signature needed.
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