Elliot Goulding on QS Recruitment, AI in Construction and the Future of Hiring

Speaker 1: 00:08
Hello and welcome. You’re listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I’m Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let’s dive into our latest episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to This Is Surveying. Today’s guest is Elliot Goulding, who is the QS recruiter and the director of ProBuild Recruitment. Welcome.

Speaker: 00:48
Yeah, thanks for introducing me, Nina.

Speaker 1: 00:50
It’s great to have you on here because we’ve had a few conversations in the past, and I think QS and the challenges of QS recruitment and hiring is an important subject for us to talk about. So I think as we always start, it would be really good to get a little bit of a background about yourself and you know what it is you do.

Speaker: 01:10
Yeah, sure. Well, recruitment’s my thing. I’ve been doing it, what, 16 years now? So originally on the corporate ladder, 10 years within a bigger organization, working to a director level within there. We then set a pro bill just before COVID, literally, as COVID kicked in. Business partner Carl, he came on board in Feb and yeah, COVID kicked in what March? So we we’ve had a real hard experience in the recruitment market as a business. We had to differentiate ourselves. One of the things that we felt we’ve done well is not only our service, but we’re really good at finding difficult people. QS is being one of the hardest people to find in the marketplace for construction. So yeah, QS is what I enjoy talking to about. I enjoy speaking to people from grad to director level, and it’s where we do our best work.

Speaker 1: 01:59
Excellent, excellent. Just uh touching on that, why are QSs hard? Why are they difficult to find? Or what is it?

Speaker: 02:07
It’s a good question. When we compare notes, if I look at the operation side of it compared to QSs, right? Site managers are out on site, they can take phone calls. As a recruiter, you need to speak to people. Okay, if you’re not interacting, you’re not getting to know who the people are, you’re only seeing CVs. And if you recruit off a CV, you get the wrong person. Okay. So if you’re speaking to site managers out on site, they can answer the phone, they can take calls. Guests are traditionally in the office, often sitting next to their boss. So actually getting hold of somebody, you have to get hold of them early, lunch, late. And it’s one of the challenges that we’ve always seen just getting hold of people. The other thing is, you know, what I find, and I’m sure we’ll touch on this, is the modern generation don’t really like communicating. So actually, a lot of their communication wants to be on text or behind email or behind socials. So you’ve got to be good at those things too. So doing a lot of time and effort in in getting QS finding you has been transformational for us in 2025.

Speaker 1: 03:08
Yeah. Yeah, you’ve got to be on it as well, haven’t you, all the time? Because things just constantly change as well. Not just with how people want to communicate, but also how what’s happening in the profession. Because I think that’s something we’ve touched upon before. We started the podcast, which was around the changes in in the profession and how that’s had an impact. I’d be interested to hear more about what it is that’s been happening out there and and how that’s changed, who’s hiring, and that kind of thing.

Speaker: 03:36
Uh yeah, what what we’re seeing in the marketplace is traditionally when I say I’ve been doing this for a long time, pre-COVID, the career pathway was massively important. Once we now got into the the sort of COVID period, people have definitely valued their time, their family time, their flexibility over that career pathway. I don’t feel that yes, there are the QS’s who want to be directors, who want to be company owners. They’re not really going to get that Kears, Bowmer and Kirklands, Tilbury Douglas’s. The career pathway has its rewards, but what we’re seeing is a lot of this sort of generation now becoming seniors going freelance, becoming surveyors that have customers within the subcontract environment or have multiple customers where they’re providing QS duties to. Some just do the front-end work, some just do the back end work, other being tensors or claims. There’s been a shift for that. Because of that, the the traditional hiring manager, they want perm. But that’s the mindset that everybody has. They want a permanent employee, and I can understand that. They want people to be part of their team, and it’s very important to have a focused team to be able to deliver the construction projects that they’re going after. The problem you have is how do you keep those guys happy? You have to be able to engage with the team and be able to understand what their needs as individuals are. Unfortunately, there is a bottleneck when you get to that commercial manager level. So CNEQSs, how do you keep those guys happy? Some want that flexibility, some want that freelance amount. So it is driving a market shift in that in that direction. These things are all, you know, I’m sure you know, Nina, from all the professions you deal with, these things are they come in a cycle. But so I’m sure there’ll be a shift where we’ll see more demand for people wanting to be more safety and have the permanent salary coming in every day. But yeah, that there definitely seems to be that COVID impact, not just we we all seen it through the generations that have come through, but it’s definitely affected surveying the surveying job group in the marketplace.

Speaker 1: 05:42
It’s across the board as well. It’s across the board on all types of surveying, but it’s across the board everywhere, everything you hear or read about, people want that flexible work-life balance. It’s become more of a thing. There’s a lot of surveyors that do want to just work so many days a week, or they just want more flexibility and to chop and choose what they want to do. And I do think we are in that. I think this is across all professions. So it does, it’s interesting how it’s almost like the way the profession’s going and what people want. And then maybe the the employees are trying to almost trying to catch up and adapt to that change. But yeah, that’s an interesting thing.

Speaker: 06:15
With regards to people, well, I just add on that. Can I just add on that? What I think I think we are in a I’m seeing last year, particularly a slight change towards the demand of people wanting to be in the office. Um what what we’re seeing is they don’t want to be in there five days a week. They don’t want to be there nine to five fixed routines. If you have if you’re a company that that has those principles, and there are some big names out there that that stick to that, you have to be on site, you have to be in the office, okay? They are the ones that are struggling to hire right now. However, if you have a more flexible arrangement where you know it’s four days on site, one day at home, or one day flexible, it doesn’t have to be on site, or you can move um your times that you start the day. There’s many people who will get in the office for 7.30 every morning, okay, or for 6.30 every morning. If you can then shift your fixed routine to be able to be flexible around people, you dramatically increase the talent pool of people you can get access to. So actually, having that understanding of what flexibility means. That doesn’t mean allowing people to work from home three days a week while they’re sitting at home in their underwear blinking, doing their job, right? That those days are gone. Anybody who wants that is not going to get anywhere. But the ability to be flexible on start time or hours they’re working, or just have a much more grown-up approach. They’re the ones that are winning right now, and the ones that are losing are people have the fixed hours. So there is a demand to get in the office. We love construction because we get to meet people. Site managers and QSs like to be on site to interact with people. That isn’t going to change, and and and that is certainly, in my opinion, coming back into the marketplace.

Speaker 1: 07:59
Interesting. Just touching on that about being on site, as as compared to other roles, sort of how much would you say QSs spend sort of on site as opposed to sort of desk space? It might be a difficult question, but just something I’m curious about.

Speaker: 08:13
It it it’s very varied. It it every person you ask is going to be different. But what what I would add from this is my my viewpoint of a what a QS is a lot of what I do is main contracting and subcontracting. We’ve not really touched upon here consultants. Consultants talking about flexibility in the workplace, they seem to have it a little bit more flexible. They don’t need to be in the office often. There are many consultant QSs who have to be with the customer three days a week, and the other two days they’re working from home. So my viewpoint is much more main contracting. And I’m sure some of the people who be listening to this know that my customers who are struggling to find QSs because they’ve been too rigid and they can’t get their boss to change on this. So contracting QSs, there’s definite benefit being on site. That’s but that’s crucial, in my opinion, to be a good QS. Typically, if you’re younger in your career as well, being out in site is important. But that there is a caveat to this, you don’t have to be so rigidamented on how when or how they’re on site.

Speaker 1: 09:12
That’s that’s helpful to understand that actually. So, with regards to the younger generations, what what’s the market like? What what are your thoughts as to where things are heading with regards to attracting new talent, challenges, opportunities, that kind of thing?

Speaker: 09:27
It it is honestly really tough. Really tough. So what I see, I touched on earlier, is I traditionally focus on that sort of senior QS and upwards um customer base where customers come to me for that. That that’s what I’m good at. However, during my career, I’ve helped many at the beginning, and I still do today. We’re looking for a training QS right now for a customer. I get five to ten messages a week from somebody looking to enter the industry, whether that be somebody as a graduate who can’t get a placement, whether that be somebody who’s out on site and wants to train as a surveyor, maybe that’s somebody who has a touch of experience elsewhere in the world and although they have a visa want to enter in the company, that they just can’t get access to positions. And something we’ve talked about in the past, isn’t it? That I feel that the world is very tough for a young individual coming into the industry right now. Regardless of what surveying principle that or discipline they’re they’re looking to enter in, there’s a transformation happening with AI that is making an impact on how younger people get a job. So if you look at the surveying duties, a lot of the surveying duties can be picked up by AI. The lower, more trainy positions, there are softwares out there, there are people who will train surveyors to be able to deliver 20 to 30% of their job via an automation. Um so if that’s the case, how do surveyors get into it? And it’s it’s something we thought about actually back into last year when we had a couple of questions on this piece. And what if I was a QS entering industry right now, you have to have a differentiator, you have to do something different to be a standout candidate. And actually, if you rather than thinking, oh, AI is gonna eat all the jobs, it’s not, it really isn’t. There’s gonna not there’s not gonna be a lack of jobs because of AR. I don’t see that happening. However, the job that you will be doing will be different. So why don’t you make yourself a standout candidate by embracing it and getting ahead of it? So if you can actually learn how to bring AI, Terry, who’s been out on site for 30 years and has a wealth of experience within the construction industry, let’s be honest, it may not be the strongest candidate to pick up or learn the AI principles. So why don’t you complement that? Why don’t you pick up AI skills and come into a construction business with a different skill set to add value to the team? That will allow you to access the industry very easily.

Speaker 1: 11:59
That’s very, very good advice because it’s something I see a lot of is the expectation now, more and more we’re getting to a stage impacting everywhere, but and and it is starting to impact Survey more and more, is where people applying for roles, employers are looking for AI understanding, even as a basic. Because the more of these firms and you know, employees that take on or adopt AI in the business, then it’s going to be like a a no-brainer as a minimum requirement. They have to have some understanding. Plus, and I think you’ll you obviously understand this, candidates can use AI in so many different ways to help them with their own critical thinking, with their own, even reviewing their own CV and looking at opportunities. But yeah, I think that’s really important. And do you then foresee if obviously there is this risk of more and more employers sort of missing that gap, not taking on that sort of graduate where someone comes on board, learns the business, develops, progresses, and then goes up. If there’s less of that, do you for then foresee there’s gonna be a gap in a in a few years’ time if that area sort of dwindles down? I don’t know. It’s there’s a lot of moving parts, isn’t there?

Speaker: 13:18
Yeah, I think just this is what you said there, there’s gonna be a certain gap within the age demographic, and this is gonna be a big problem. So I remember the, you know, I entered the industry just before the housing crisis when in 2008, when everything crashed. And the knock-on effect of that five years later, there wasn’t anybody in that intermediate of project QS level who was able to be very cost-effective for a business where they could put them on a site and know they were training, they were still delivering as they were going along. There was a wealth of senior surveyors, a lot of those were retiring, and there was some trainees entering market, but there was this middle section that if you got hold of one of those people, I could tell you I’d place them. That that was the mindset. That little sweet spot was really, really in demand. I can see that happening again. So there will be a position where we’re in three to five years’ time that the AI impact will have a similar effect on the jobs market that the housing crash did. So if you don’t hire these people, you’re gonna be lacking in staff in the future. We sort of touched on flexibility earlier on about the how’d you hire a surveyor, what why are they so hard to find? One of the things I think that that’s crucial when I’m when I’m consulting with my clients at the moment, I talk to them about why are you hiring. QS’s look at money all day in, day out. Figures matter to QS’s. We can talk about that. They’re well paid, they they normally earn the money, most do anyway. That is always going to be a factor in any profession. People look at money, okay. However, the number one hiring, the the number one thing that impacts your success to hiring is whether, and keeping staff as well, actually, is whether they feel a part of the purpose of what you’re doing. So if you’re a business leader that actually enables and empowers the staff to feel part of the journey, feel part of the purpose, feel like their value is heard within their project they’re doing, not just on the project team, but but in the company, you’ll have much more success in hiring and maturing and most importantly, retaining the staff that you’ve got at the moment. So we’re talking about how do we get these people and when is there going to be a gap? Well, the first thing is when we get them, keep hold of them. Make sure that you, you know, your purpose aligns with what their vision is as well. And when you’re team building, this is where the sort of consultancy side of recruitment comes in that people really devalue. It’s actually thinking about the strategic hires you have within your team, not just the core QS skills, but who’s on top of what, who’s good at what within the function that adds more value to the team, so that when you bring it together, you have a real strong impact in the business, let alone the project team.

Speaker 1: 15:49
I think that’s something that is it is undervalued with with recruiters, I think, is you’ve not only got the understanding of the profession, the marketplace constantly, and exposure to all these different variables all the time, and that experience is extremely valuable. And you’ve got extensive experience over a number of years. But I think recruiters with this kind of experience that you’ve got, you provide those insights. It’s like you, the litmus test, you know what’s happening out there. You’ve kind of in the in the sort of on the coal face of the changes, the challenges, the expectations of candidates. And it’s that matching, it’s that pairing. I think a lot of recruitment, and you can tell me if I’m wrong, but for me, a lot of it is is looking at the culture of an employer, looking at their team, looking at, like you say, where are those gaps? It’s not just let’s just plug a hole and fill a role. It’s the nuance of it all. Who is that you will look at whether that person is the correct fit. They’ve got these things on a piece of paper.

Speaker: 16:54
Yeah, the key successes, again, I’ve seen in the marketplace, whether they choose me or they choose somebody else, is that particularly I like working myself with small to media enterprises and businesses in that market where you can deal with the decision makers hands-on. They’re the people that need a partner in recruitment because they need somebody that actually has their back that somebody knows who’s going on the market for knows who’s going after their stuff. You know, who’s who’s who might leave? Who’s actually pinching or how are they going to keep the people in their team so they don’t have to pay a fee to hire in the future? And if you actually align yourself with uh a good recruiter who actually cares about your business, it really, really makes a difference on where the business goes. Okay, if you find the right people and keep the right people, then whatever you’re doing, whether you’re building a high-rise building or whether you’re a dry-lining subcontractor, you can build a comprehensive business that’s successful. People matter. And actually, the start of having the people in the business is finding them. Okay, and then the rest of it is keeping them happy and keeping them on board.

Speaker 1: 17:55
It’s so true, isn’t it? So much focus, I think, is on literally job advert, fill that role, and then it’s almost like some of the rest of it’s forgotten. Yeah, it’s like anything. Once you get someone on board, you need to do everything to make sure they stay. Because, like you say, the the the the poaching thing happens all the time.

Speaker: 18:14
I’ll give you a good example. We picked up a customer last week, a new customer on board. They have an internal recruitment team, and they’re not just a construction business, they have other operations. Now, that person looks like a very good recruiter, but there’s absolutely no way that that person has their hand that has a handle on the QS market within the Northwest that I have. Absolutely no. And their manager knows this. They know this. However, they have a process and they have a procedure, a couple of weeks that they have to follow before they will come to me with the vacancy. And their manager is already giving me a bell because he knows what will happen internally. Actually, having that expertise in what you’re doing, having the network to go to gives you a head start when hiring. And not only that, you know, that guy I was referred to that guy from work we’d done previously with another business, and somebody that he’d taken on said, I know this guy, we better use him because he’ll help us. When we start to have a relationship, okay, because it is a new relationship, I will start to care for their business and actually care where they’re going and what they’re doing, and that will only positively impact what they’re gonna do and where they’re gonna deliver. If they get good QSs and I care about how they’re getting on their career, the person, the individual who comes on board will have a better success story, and the hire a better success story. So there’s a lot of wealth you can have within a business by partnering with a recruitment agency.

Speaker 1: 19:35
That’s it.

Speaker: 19:37
If if if I touch on some of my frustrations as a recruiter, I think it’s worth sharing. If if you are a hiring manager and you’re listening to this at the moment, is when you have three, four, five agencies on a job, okay, and I get it for your tier ones, I get that, I get that right. You need a greater demographic, you need to cover maybe multiple countries, at least the whole of the UK and multiple professions, and you’re not going to get that specialism, in my opinion, from one agency. But if you’re local business, small to media enterprise, and you need to hire, okay, you want to have somebody that has your back. Because if you go to three, four, five other agencies, I’ll tell you what happens now. It’s a race, okay? Because it’s a speed race. Recruitment works on a game where it’s the first past the post. Yeah. So they’ll be sending you your six, seven out of ten candidates. They won’t be taking a strategic approach, they won’t build a talent pool, they won’t build an outreach program, they won’t look at the whole of market. Okay, they’ll just get the first person they know that’s available. Generally, is the first person available probably the best person for it?

Speaker 1: 20:39
If you’re lucky, is it like throwing something and hoping it sticks?

Speaker: 20:41
It’s like yeah, well, I’ve seen it. I’ve I’ve I’ve worked in corporate jobs where the the pressure on is to be fast. It’s speed over quality. And and yeah, and look, that works sometimes. Sometimes you need something in a Monday, right? I get that, but but as a principle, if you’re building a a team successful business, and we already touched upon the importance and the value that people have within that business, then surely you want to get the the best, not the quickest.

Speaker 1: 21:07
Yeah, no, I think that’s really I I totally agree with you there. I think there is a there’s a there’s a lot of and you’ll you’ll know this, uh perceptions about recruiters, that there’s always been this thing. But the thing is if you find a good recruiter such as yourself, who it is about partnering, it’s not just here’s 300 CVs, off you go. You’re actually looking at actually, is that candidate really the right fit? Because you want them to stay in that business. You want them to stay in that business because then they come back, they come back to you.

Speaker: 21:39
Yeah, we’ve had probably now six years where we’ve had one candidate within that hasn’t worked out within the period. And and it was a risky high at the time. We talked about the cursed customer and they made the decision. Um but yeah, yeah, the the the hundreds of people we’ve placed, we’ve had one that’s had an issue.

Speaker 1: 21:56
That’s really good, really good a so one of the things I’d like to Understand a bit more about and we touched upon before the call was hard heart AI. Yeah, let’s let’s talk about the listeners. Yeah, what that is about.

Speaker: 22:10
Yeah, so we we we touched upon earlier the impact that AI is having in construction. This is something that I recognized. I love AI by the way. I absolutely love it. I think it’s it’s gonna make our world such a better place. That’s my viewpoint. So we implemented a lot of changes within Pro Bowl Recruitment uh, what, 18 months ago? Where we looked at all the softwares we were using, but more importantly we looked at the processes and how we could be more efficient. I run a lifestyle business. It’s me and my business partner, we don’t have a team of 20 people on there. How do we 10x that? And AI, the the changes we made within the business that allowed us to do that. Anything that is text should be used by AI. So CVs. We have a CV GPT that we use that almost instantly profiles candidate CV or a QS’s CV to match the criteria of the job that we’ve got from the experience they got. Now that’s not misleading, that’s just reorganization. At the end of the day, QS the amount of CVs I’ve had from an experienced individual where they’ve been at a company for 10, 12 years and they don’t know how to write a CV. Okay.

Speaker 1: 23:16
Provide that advice almost. Do you give that feedback?

Speaker: 23:19
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. The I don’t like changing words on CVs. I think that’s very important that somebody keeps their own language within a CV because that’s part of the communication habit. However, I’ll also tell you neither the amount of CVs I’ve had in Excel from QSs, right? That they come through, you you’d be surprised. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:39
Well, because I know they love it.

Speaker: 23:41
John, who hasn’t moved for 15 years and uses spreadsheets every single day. Yeah, where’s the where does he go to? Yeah, he goes to Excel. So just usually look, these are the extreme examples. But the point being is that generally people are good at their job, don’t have to look for job very often. Now it’s changing, and we could talk about that if you like about a career pathway, but it isn’t changing very often. They’re not sorry, they are not changing jobs very often. So why would we expect them to be good at writing a CV? However, uh I’m looking at 100 CVs a day. Okay, and and I know how to function, how to do that. Anyway, point being is that expertise we have almost downloaded to AI to have a quick function that we can pull a person’s CV into a uh template. It’s simple, simply a template that fit works, a fluid template that works into the job that we’re recruiting for. Okay, not only that, right? We then jobs. Jobs are are massive, and and we talked about being in a race against three or four other agencies on a job before. It’s exactly the same with a job board or how you do your marketing or how you do your LinkedIn, how you advertise it. So you’ve got to maximize the amount of times quantity spares meaning in an advert. So we have another GPT that that does a lot of marketing for us. We use not just GPTs, but we actually use automation and software to be able to outreach and more importantly, program my diary so that I know when I need to call people to be able to reach them. Okay, call, call, or warm call. So actually saving me a lot of time about thinking about how do I get hold of that person. So just on using the outreach and the job seeking process, let alone all the back office we have to do to be able to do business development, to manage talent pools, to CD search, to make yeah. Well, we talked about speed earlier on. Speed is very important, as we mentioned, and having a folder or a file of 300 QSs who are specialists within that discipline, how do you get through those very quickly to find out who the person is that that is available or is actually in budget or actually lives in the right location? So using AI and search tools within that function has been revolutionary for my business, definitely. So, how do we transfer? How do we I thought about this as a six, nine months ago. I’m like, how do we actually get this into construction? Because one of the key things I’m seeing out there is you’ve got tech, you’ve got finance, you’ve got lawyers all panicking for their jobs because tech is actually changing the way that their industries work. We’re construction, we’re quite chill, we’re sitting back. And what I’m seeing is the reason being is we’re 18 months behind those industries. It will come. Tech will change our industry, AI will change our industry. And if you’re not already looking at this, you are already behind. But the good news is we still have a window. Okay, we still have a window for change. And that is what we want to look at with hard hat AI. It’s a supplementary service that we want to provide to our clients that allows us to look at their businesses. Every company, let me take this step back, Nina. Every construction business is different, they all have a different function on what they do and how they deliver. However, there is always something that involves words and admin within there, or pictures, or drawings. All of these things can be picked up by AI and 10x within the business. So, as part of what we’re looking at, it’s almost like a people or robot solution. Okay, let us come and have a chat with you in your business, understand what your pains and your problems are, understanding what your level of experience is within AI and what your belief in AI is. Then let us allow, let us demonstrate to you where we can magnify or 10x your QS or be able to develop the staff within the team to be able to do this stuff themselves. So hard head AI is initially focused within training and auditing, having a look into your businesses, who within your business actually likes AI first and foremost. How do we, yeah, how do we enable them to do to impact your business to a further degree? How can we then do the stuff that they can’t? How can we build automations, build GBTs, build whatever it may be that allows you to do your the core stuff you do in your duty, uh in your day job, should I say? Okay, so it it it it it’s a service that we want to provide to our customers to really look at your company and go, right, if you’ve got a problem, do you want a person to deal with that or do you want to automate it?

Speaker 1: 27:57
Yeah, so it’s printing up the time to focus on where you need a person. So it’s pretty much all those literally mundane processes that, like you say, and the the ability with AI to assimilate data, analyse it, improved, speed up process. I mean, obviously you always need the people, and like you say, it’s not a case of everyone people are just gonna be out of the loop. You’ll always need that. Yeah. Especially in inherent treatment.

Speaker: 28:23
And if you are doing this, you’re I’ve I’ve got a friend who you may watch this, and he tells me he’s never gonna search AI, and he’s a friend, a close friend, that runs a subcontractor, and he’s never gonna do it. And he’s right, I understand where he’s at, he’s in the bottom of the food chain, okay? With what he does within his specialism, he he will be one of the last impacted in our industry. Get it, understand it. However, when he looks back in two years and the competitor that is embracing this is now delivering twice as much as he’s doing, he’s gonna be wondering why he’s not getting more of the pie. Why is Aka Peter eating off his table and taking his business from him? So the AI revolution is here, we are in it. Good news, right? We’re learning from all the mistakes that all the accountants and all the lawyers have already made and all the software that hasn’t worked, right? To be able to utilize that and now actually make an impact on construction companies.

Speaker 1: 29:15
It’s polarizing, it’s very that’s very true, Ellie. It’s it’s polarizing, I think. AI, there are, yes, I hear the saying, I’m not touching it. And the thing I keep saying is, even if you don’t, it’s gonna impact you indirectly or not. Because even if you’re not going to be adopting it or using it, your customers, clients will be, and there’ll be an expectation that you understand it. They’ll but they’ll ask questions about it at some point. So if even if you don’t want to use it, you will look behind the curve because the public and everyone are seeing it every day to day, and like you know, 2025 was the year that it really everyone started to wake up because it’s just within everything we already use. But it started to work, but it’s everywhere, yeah.

Speaker: 29:56
Yeah, the key thing is it starts to work now, right? I’ve you know, I mentioned 18 months is probably where I’d say my window of really utilising AI, but I’ve been looking at AI for three years, it just didn’t work very well. You know, no, no, it didn’t. Yeah, now now it works. Yeah, now it works. And and look, it’s not 100% accurate. That’s why we need the people. It it it it’s it’s a complement, not a replacement.

Speaker 1: 30:27
It’s funny that 100% accuracy because people aren’t perfect either. And there is always assumptions that, well, it can’t do my role, AI can’t it it it makes mistakes, well, so do people. And I think that’s what people forget, that part of it. It’s that assumption that we are perfect, we’re not perfect at all. And we don’t get tired, we don’t get hungry, we don’t AI doesn’t get tired hungry. It’s food is data, and it can just keep going on 24-7. I think, yeah, but we we could talk a lot about this earlier. Is there anything else before we wrap up today? Anything else that you would like to share with?

Speaker: 30:59
No, I’m the only thing I think that’s as long as it’s sharing, but I’m really interested to see what 2026 brings. I think that we’ve been through a hell of a year in 2025. I’m I’m part of a bigger recruitment network, and and every person within that network, not everyone, but 99% of the people we speak to, they have had a worse year than 2024. So we are on a backwards step, okay? We we we’re as a country, uh as a planet, we’ve probably taken a backwards step with regards to what we’re creating and and how people are hired in the workplace. What we personally see an impact that has been the Building Safety Act and the changes that have made getting through Gateway an absolute nightmare. There’s a massive delay that we were promised was going to be cleared out in 2025. We were expecting a big, big heavy year ourselves as a business, and it never really came. We’re now seeing a few things come through Gateway. We’re now seeing processes, uh projects actually get through and and start on site. Is that a start of a boom? I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful, but I don’t know. You know, the latest stats I see is that actually that you know the delay is going up and up and up and up and up. And if that’s gonna be the case, then something needs to change because we’re really slowing ourselves down as a country to be able to deliver the projects we want to deliver. Um, so I I’m intrigued. I’m definitely an optimist. I’m hopeful that 2026 is is gonna be there. There’s always the beauty of being a QS is there’s always more jobs than there are QSs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in my career, but and ever seen that reversed throughout my career. But yeah, yeah, there’s always more jobs, you know. Again, finding good surveyors is is is different to finding a surveyor, but there’s always a demand for QSs. What happens if it does boom? What happens if all of a sudden we get through all these high-rise development jobs that are delayed throughout the cities in the UK come through? We’re already seeing a slight shortage of QSs or being magnified again. Okay, and that’s where AI and increasing your efficiencies within the processes you deliver, that’s where the keep companies that do that will be the ones that will win.

Speaker 1: 32:59
Interesting. Yeah, and there’s a lot of change, isn’t there? It’s and it’s it’s keeping up with the change. It’s it can be so unpredictable sometimes, but I think we’re in the the biggest uh change ever. Like literally everybody with the impact of of AI and things, but I guess keeping on your toes like you were earlier. But what I’ll do is I always I’ll include links to pro build recruitment in the show notes. Yes.

Speaker: 33:27
Yep. The best way to find me if people want to have a conversation about the QS career or have any advice, I get I always respond to anybody who asks me for career advice. So the best way to do that is drop me a message on LinkedIn, and that that’s generally where I hang out. You can get my email address, my phone number, all that is online. You can find it. Give me a bell. I’ve got no issues or anybody giving me a call. Um, likewise, if you’re looking to hire a QS or you just want to talk about your more your strategy about how you’re gonna grow your business, where you want to increase your turnover and how do you do that profitably, you utilising stuff available to you again. I’m more than happy to have a conversation if anybody wants to do that.

Speaker 1: 34:03
Super. So definitely include your LinkedIn then on the show notes so people can get in touch. Yeah, indeed. Thank you very much for today, Elliot. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation, and it’s really good to get your perspective on things because you are so close to the market within QS, and I think people listening to this, both employers and uh QS’s students, are gonna find the things that you’ve shared very helpful and very interesting. And I want to thank you for your time today.

Speaker: 34:32
No, thank you for what you’re doing as well, Nina. It’s the the building a community of surveyors, particularly QS’s is something that I’ve always wanted to see happen. And I think there’s definitely a space to really impact that network. So yeah, keep doing that.

Speaker 1: 34:46
I think it’s it’s uh thank you. I think uh and yeah, QS is that so the surveying room on Surveyors UK is is a free community, and it’s been early days with it, but it’s growing really fast, and I think I think it’s needed. I think we need a place for all types of surveyor and QS especially, where they can just connect, network, and get support from each other. But no, thank you for today, Elliot. It’s been enlightening. Thank you. Thank you for listening to This Is Surveying. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and supports the work we’re doing to raise awareness of the profession. You can also join the Surveying Room, the free and independent community from Surveyors UK, bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and of course making surveying visible. Just head over to surveyors-uk.com to learn more and join today. All the links discussed in today’s episode are included in the show notes.