Quantity surveying personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

For six years I priced up materials for builders across Stoke-on-Trent, and the same conversation kept happening at the trade counter. A customer would bring in a drawing, ask what the job would cost, and then find that the figure they had given their client months earlier no longer held. Timber prices had moved, the spec had changed, or nobody had allowed for waste. I became interested in the people who deal with that properly: who measure what a building actually contains, price it, and then keep track of the money as the work goes on. Quantity surveying seemed to sit exactly where my curiosity already was, between drawings, materials and cost. I want to study it formally because the version I picked up at work was fragmentary. I can estimate a materials package sensibly, but I do not understand how a bill of quantities is structured, how contracts allocate risk between parties, or how a valuation is prepared and defended. I have started reading around measurement conventions and was surprised how much of the discipline is about definitions being shared so that two people measuring the same wall arrive at the same answer. I am also drawn to the questions the industry is arguing about now: whole-life cost against lowest tender, the cost implications of designing for reuse, and how retrofit is priced when the existing building keeps surprising you. Returning to study at 29 is a deliberate choice rather than an escape from work I disliked. I enjoyed the trade; I want to be the person advising on cost rather than the person quoting a delivery.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

I left school with GCSEs including grade 6 in Mathematics and grade 5 in English Language, then went straight into work. I am now completing an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Construction and the Built Environment at my local college, studying two evenings a week and one day release. The mathematics and technology units have been the most useful correction to how I worked before. I could calculate volumes of concrete quickly by habit, but the course made me set out the method properly, keep units consistent and show where an assumption had been made. My construction technology unit covered substructures, floor and roof construction and building regulations, and for one assignment I produced a specification and outline material schedule for a small single-storey extension, working from a set of drawings the tutor provided. I learned that the difficult part was not the arithmetic but deciding what the drawings did not tell me and recording those queries rather than guessing. I have also taken a GCSE-equivalent refresher in written communication, because report writing is a real part of the job and I had not written anything longer than an email in years. Studying while working has forced me to plan properly: I block out study time on a calendar shared with my partner, and I have learned to start assignments early because trade counter shifts often overrun. Alongside the course I have been reading construction press and following the cost commentary in it, which has helped me see how national material price movements connect to the quotes I used to type out.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

At the builders' merchant I moved from loading vans in the yard to the trade counter and eventually to preparing written quotations for regular account customers. That meant reading drawings and cutting lists, checking stock and lead times, calculating quantities for items such as joists, insulation and plasterboard, and allowing for waste and offcuts. I dealt with customers who queried an invoice or found a shortfall on site, which taught me to keep clear records and to explain a figure calmly rather than defensively. I also spent a period doing stock counts and reconciling discrepancies, unglamorous work that showed me how quickly small errors in recording accumulate into a significant variance. I now work part-time at the same merchant while studying. Outside work I help look after a community scout hut used by three local groups. Last year the roof covering needed replacing and I put together a breakdown of likely material and labour costs for the committee, obtained three quotations and set them out side by side so that the differences in scope were visible rather than hidden in a single total. The lowest price excluded scaffolding, which made it the dearest option once compared properly. Explaining that to volunteers who are not from the trade was good practice in making cost information usable. I play in a Sunday league football team and took over organising fixtures and subs when our previous secretary moved away, which mostly involves chasing people politely. I hope to work towards chartered status after graduating, and to build a career in cost management on building projects in the Midlands.

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