Quantity Surveyor Skills Assessment

• Are you a qualified quantity surveyor?
• Under the age of 45?
• In good health?
• Fluent in English?

Then emigrating to Australia may be an option for you! Continue reading to find out:

• The criteria to meet to emigrate to Australia as a quantity surveyor.
• What is expected of you by Immigration Australia.
• The immigration process to follow.

Introducing ANZSCO

The Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO) provides information used by Australia to check the skill levels of jobs, and the qualifications and/or experience needed to work in those jobs when assessing applicants for certain visas.

There are three lists within ANZSCO:

• Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List (MLTSSL)
• Short-term Skilled Occupation List (STSOL)
• Regional Occupation List (ROL)

If your occupation appears on one of these lists, you may be eligible for emigration to Australia.

Here’s the good news

Quantity surveyors are on the MLTSSL!

This means there is a shortage of professionals in Australia to fill all the gaps in the job market. Seeing as these occupations are important for Australia to do well as a country, the government has approved hiring talent from overseas.

Don’t start celebrating just yet!

Appearing on the MLTSSL is only the first step.

Each occupation has a code assigned to it, a skill level and also an assessing authority, and you have to meet all the requirements associated with these different parts of the process to qualify for a skilled migration visa.

ANZSCO Code

The ANZSCO code assigned to quantity surveyors is 233213. This code gives us more details about the criteria quantity surveyors have to meet in order to qualify to emigrate to Australia.

The first thing we look at is the group that quantity surveyors fall under:

Major Group: 2 – Professionals | Sub-Major Group: 23 – Design, Engineering, Science and Transport Professionals | Minor Group: 233 – Engineering Professionals | Unit Group: 2332 – Civil Engineering Professionals

As you can see there are four groups showing how the code is made up – we are mostly interested in the code (233213) which is specific to quantity surveyors.

Description of Role

This part of the ANZSCO criteria lays out a broad description of what a quantity surveyor is supposed to be able to do:

Estimates and monitors construction costs from the project feasibility stage, through tender preparation, to the construction period and beyond. 

Required Skill Level

Quantity surveyors is a Skill Level 1, which means you must have a level of skill comparable with a bachelor degree or higher qualification. In the absence of a formal qualification, at least five years of relevant experience may act as a substitute.

In some instances relevant experience and/or on-the-job training may be required in addition to the formal qualification.

Tasks

When applying for emigration as a quantity surveyor, you must be able to demonstrate or prove that you can perform the majority of the tasks below:

• Determining construction methods, materials and quality standards, and drafting and interpreting specifications, drawings, plans, construction methods and procedures.
• Organising and directing site labour and the delivery of construction materials, plant and equipment, and establishing detailed programs for the coordination of site activities.
• Obtaining soil and rock samples at different depths across sites and testing samples to determine strength, compressibility and other factors that affect the behaviour of soil and rock when a structure is imposed and determining the safe loading for the soil.
• Studying architectural and engineering drawings and specifications to estimate total costs, and preparing detailed cost plans and estimates as tools to assist in budgetary control.
• Monitoring changes to designs, assessing effects on cost, and measuring, valuing and negotiating variations to designs.
• Analysing structural systems for both static and dynamic loads.
• Designing structures to ensure they do not collapse, bend, twist or vibrate in undesirable ways.
• Assessing present and future travel flow patterns taking into account population increase and needs change.
• Designing the physical aspects of transportation systems such as highways, railroads, urban transit, air transportation, logistical supply systems and their terminals.

Job First?

Many people mistakenly think that finding a job is the first step when immigrating.

In fact, the first step should always be an immigration assessment to see if you have the necessary skills, qualifications and experience to live and work in Australia.

Why do we say this?

Our reasoning is two-fold.

Firstly, if you don’t meet the requirements for skilled migration, you won’t be able to apply for a visa.

Secondly, doing an assessment first and knowing for sure that you’re eligible for immigration enables you to job hunt with confidence. Employers are much more likely to extend job offers if they know that you can work in Australia.

The golden rule? Do an assessment, then find a job.