QSIC 2010

The Quantity Surveying International Conference (QSIC) 2010 was successfully held on 12 and 13 October 2010. Kudos to the organizing committee under both the co-chairmanship of Sr Rozita Yahya of JKR and Assoc Prof Dr Rohana Mahbub of UITM. There were 2 keynote addresses and 13 papers from both the industry practitioners and also academia. It was a good blend of industry practise and academic research.

All the 5 papers where I was the session chairman really made me sit up because they were current and relevant. If I could summarized all the 5 papers and for us to ponder on the question/challenge that I posed to each of these papers as below:-

• Paper 7 by Sr Junaidah talked about how JKR is transforming in the way they managed projects by emphasizing on project management best practices, and producing competent and matured project managers." - The question is whether the client, contractors and the stakeholders are feeling this change as we know how authoritative, autocratic and patronising JKR can be in managing projects?
• Paper 8 by Assoc Prof Sr Dr Fadzil Hassan presented the findings with regards to Graduate QS possessesing the competency of TODAY for ONE career (not competency of the future for a multi-versatile career), with an average competency scale of 3 – 3.25 over a scale of 5." - This is worrying as all along to me QS training has made me very versatile and forward looking and I'm always hungry for knowledge. Was there a wrong turn in changing of curriculum, or the education system, or the youngs of today are not as tough with the wrong attitude?
• Paper 9 by Prof Dr Abdul Rashid presented the findings where Malaysian services are uncompetitive internationally and export of QS services showed only 22 of 278 QS firms (8%) have gone abroad in several countries." - This posed the question of whether are we ready for liberalisation of services? The Q&A session was abit heated when question of what ISM and BQSM are doing about it. It was informed that BQSM had drafted the QS roadmap and this was thoroughly discussed in various forums. ISM had applied and obtained a grant from the government to conduct CPD and outreach programs but sadly only a handful of QS were interested to attend these talks and programs as CPD points were not awarded. 
• Paper 10 by Sr Hisham Jafrey provided a positive message that QS are required and is an asset to the project team for civil and structural engineering works but the challenge is to convince clients on the necessity to appoint QS for these engineering projects." - The challenge is for QS to buck up and show to clients our worth and value for these engineering projects and not just complaining and expecting clients to come to us for our services - please speak up in meetings and advice on contractual issues.
• Paper 11 by Sr Roznita Othman tried to shake us out of our protective and selfish stand and to share knowledge as “Knowledge has a shelf life and shared knowledge is power”. - The challenge is for a change of mindset understanding that sharing of knowledge is of utmost important and to start being a learning organisation by putting in place systems and procedure for knowledge to be captured and shared within the organisation.