CAREER PROFILE

What does a Quantity Surveyor actually do?

The honest version — real salaries, real hours, real entry routes. From the CourseThread Career Atlas.

Starting salary — log in
Mid-career salary — log in
42–50 hrs
Typical week
AI: Medium
AI vulnerability

The short version

Quantity surveyors run the money on construction projects — pricing work before it's built, valuing it while it goes up, and fighting over the final account. It's the most office-shaped career in construction, and one of the few that needs a chartered qualification.

The pitch: real professional status (MRICS), a genuine earnings ceiling, and a role AI can't kill — but can hollow out at the junior end. The catch: you're the person who delivers bad news about money, the APC takes years, and a lot of the early job is measurement and spreadsheets.

Entry routes that actually work

  • RICS-accredited degree + APC — the classic route to chartership.
  • Chartered surveyor degree apprenticeship — earn while you train, same MRICS destination.
  • Conversion masters — any degree, then a 1-year accredited MSc.

Read the full guide — free

The complete Quantity Surveyor profile — salary by year, honest day-in-the-life, AI vulnerability breakdown, and the exit-path map — is in the Career Atlas. Log in to read it online or download the PDF.

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Free account. No card. The Atlas is free to read and download.

Inside the full guide

Money & progression — salary bands by level, sources cited
Day in the life — a real Tuesday, not the brochure version
AI vulnerability — what AI does, can't do, and how the role is changing
Exit paths — where people go at 2, 5, and 10 years

Compare with

BricklayerElectricianPlumberCarpenter & JoinerPlastererPainter & DecoratorRooferGroundworker / Civil OperativeSite ManagerBuilding Services Engineer (M&E)