The Datum Report

Occupation 2453 · Professional occupations

Quantity surveyors

Half of full-time quantity surveyors in the UK earn more than £52,537 a year, and half earn less.

Quantity surveyors advise on financial and contractual matters relating to, and prepare bills of quantities for, construction projects and provide other support functions concerning the financing and materials required for building projects.

How people enter it

Entry is through professional training and membership of an appropriate professional organisation. Entry to professional examinations will require a degree or equivalent qualification. Apprenticeships are also available. Candidates usually undertake a period of probationary training and professional assessment.

What the work involves

• liaises with client on project costs, formulates detailed cost plan and advises contractors and engineers to ensure that they remain within cost limit
• examines plans and specifications and prepares details of the material and labour required for the project
• prepares bills of quantities for use by contractors when tendering for work
• examines tenders received, advises client on the most acceptable and assists with preparation of a contract document
• measures and values work in progress and examines any deviations from original contract
• measures and values completed contract for authorisation of payment

Also called

Quantity surveyor · Survey technician · Surveyor (quantity surveying)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for quantity surveyors, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 4 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Architects · Chartered architectural technologists, planning officers and consultants · Chartered surveyors · Construction project managers and related professionals