M&E Quantity Surveying and the Year of Covid19
Being in the position I am I get to speak with lots of people day to day, I open my laptop and can work from home, the park, a pub or the office BUT Covid19 took that option from me and a lot of others with no warning!
Being in the position I am I get to speak with lots of people day to day, I open my laptop and can work from home, the park, a pub or the office BUT Covid19 took that option from me and a lot of others with no warning!
I have had an opportunity to speak with some of the M&E Quantity Surveyors working on the front line of Construction Projects in the city that still need them to work!
“It’s been a year of change; all of our working practises and environment have been impacted by the global pandemic”
A year of change, a lot of positives and equally a lot of challenges! When speaking to one lady who is currently working for a developer site based in London, she has spent over a hundred hours on Zoom, meetings have taken longer, had less of an impact, bad internet connections and the communication is less affective! One thing that has been a common along on the people I have spoken with is it Camera on or Camera off?
Important meetings are being done and we are unable to read body language read emotions and understand how to press forward!
This being taken away surely is having a huge impact on the outcomes being had, but not only in a business setting but in a social setting to. People are not getting the social interactions of an office environment or the site office communication…day in day out looking at a picture or a blank screen while on a 3-hour meeting, this surely will have an impact on the strongest of people.
All of the QS’s I spoke with miss the office and being onsite, one freelance QS I spoke with hasn’t been in the office or site since March! Yes, he said it had its pros and the work life balance has been the best it has been for years. But missing out on the interactions with site staff and the cheeky beer after work is having an impact, along with the doing more hours and picking up more work!
The people I have spoken with have said that it has been a year of challenge, learning and development, management learning new ways to develop staff over remote meetings, learning a new way of doing business and getting the job done, BUT they have all got what they needed to done!
Challenges, have been thrown at everyone in 2020, I feel when speaking to the Construction industry that everyone has taken the positives that have come out of this year really only looking to do one thing and that’s build a bigger and better 2021.