星空传媒

It's all your fault

What a pasting the QS profession received in Saturday's Guardian. Writer John Crace, who pens satirical pieces on different professions every week, decided to aim his ire at QSs for their alleged inability to predict out-turn costs of projects in the wake of the Wembley stadium fiasco. He decided to ignore the incompetence of builders and clients and lay the blame squarely at QSs. Pointing to other construction schemes that have busted their initial budgets, such as the Channel Tunnel, Crace wrote: "If it was just a few quid here and there, no one would care too much, but when quantity surveyors get it wrong they do it in style. A 50% overspend is nothing to be ashamed of for a top ." Ouch.

Crace then claimed the only sensible explanation for why QSs get it so wrong is that they work on the assumption that "everything can be bought for the best possible price, that the sun will shine 24 hours a day and that everything will fit perfectly". He ended his diatribe by acknowledging that he was likely to receive a barrage of complaints about his piece and then added: "But even if I've got only half of it right, I've done a far better job than most quantity surveyors". One gets the feeling he had his tongue somewhat in his cheek, but we're obviously keen to get the case for the defence. Email your hate mail to Crace via qsnews@cmpinformation.com

Vintage year for Mace staff

Hot on the heels of this column's revelations on the shooting and fishing antics of top brass at Mace such as Gary France, we bring you further news of extra curricular activities at the firm. It seems that operations director and legal advisor Amy Chapman is a wine enthusiast. So enthusiastic in fact that she has just passed a diploma in wine growing and tasting. No prizes for guessing which was the fun bit. But that's not all. Chapman has actually won a prize for being the best non-wine trade diploma student in the country. And the prize? A case of wine of course.

Wakemans' winner

Congrats to 23-year-old Laing O'Rourke staffer Ilyas Mohammed, who recently graduated from the University of Central England and has also won the Wakemans Law Prize, an annual contest supported by the aforementioned QS firm.

Tomorrow's chip paper

It seems we've inadvertently caused grief for Isabel McAllister at Cyril Sweett. We featured a picture of the associate director of sustainability - who is not a QS by the way - in a recent story in which we quoted her views on the construction industry's performance on green issues. She did give QSs a bit of stick, but she also highlighted areas where they were doing well. So maybe we were a little heavy-handed in the caption beneath McAllister's picture which read "McAllister: QSs failing". We hear that on her way to her desk at Sweetts of a morning Isabel has to walk past a fair few peeved QSs. We offer our apologies.