Overview
Quantity surveying is one of the most structured graduate career paths in construction. The route from BSc to MRICS takes around 2 to 3 years of supervised experience and culminates in the APC (Assessment of Professional Competence) interview. Graduate schemes at firms like Gleeds, Currie & Brown, Gardiner & Theobald, and Arcadis are competitive, and your resume needs to show that you can measure, cost, and manage money on a construction project, not just study it in a textbook.
This resume belongs to Sophie Brennan, a Quantity Surveying BSc graduate from Liverpool John Moores University. She completed a 12 month placement at a cost consultancy, worked on projects totalling £45 million, and is on the RICS APC pathway. Her resume demonstrates commercial awareness alongside technical measurement skills.
What Makes This Resume Work
The placement experience reads like a real QS workload. Sophie prepared interim valuations for 3 live projects, measured variations worth £380,000 using NRM2 rules, and assisted with the final account on a £12 million school build. She also attended 8 site meetings and recorded minutes. These are core QS tasks, and describing them with values and project names shows she contributed meaningfully during her placement.
RICS pathway is explicitly mentioned. Her resume states she is on the RICS APC pathway and has begun logging competencies under a counsellor. This signals long term commitment to the profession and tells employers she understands the journey to chartership.
Software skills match industry expectations. CostX for measurement and take off, Microsoft Excel for cost planning, and experience with Causeway and Coins ERP systems. These are the tools QS firms use daily, and listing them shows Sophie can contribute to project work from day one rather than needing extensive software training.
The dissertation tackles a commercial question. Her research compared the accuracy of elemental cost plans at RIBA Stage 2 versus Stage 4 on 6 completed housing projects. She found an average variance of 8.3% at Stage 2, reducing to 2.1% at Stage 4. This demonstrates she can analyse real cost data and draw conclusions that are useful to practitioners.
Key Takeaways
Describe your placement with project values, measurement quantities, and contract types. QS is a commercial profession, and your resume should be full of numbers, not descriptions.
State your RICS APC status and mention your counsellor arrangement if you have one. Employers recruiting trainee QS candidates are investing in your chartership, and showing you have already started the process adds value.
List specific measurement and cost management software. CostX, Buildsoft, Causeway, CATO, and Microsoft Excel with pivot tables and VLOOKUP functions are all relevant to a trainee QS resume.
