Ethics - Flashcards
You are working for a private QS company as a senior surveyor (MRICS) and a junior surveyor
working in your team incorrectly over certifies on an interim valuation – what should you do?
How much? Where is it? Has it been paid?
Pay Less Notice? Must be 5 days before date of payment
Now - Unable to make payless notice
Client - Now at risk
Senior surveyor must apologise and produce a written report. Sorry, will not happen again, procedures have now been put in place
Speak to the contractor to let them know and take it off the next valuation
Can you ask for it back? No
Assuming you were successful in getting Chartered, how would you deal with a situation such as a
friend who asks you to provide them with QS advice for a house extension that they are about to
undertake.
Duty of care is owed even if providing pro-bono or friendly advice.
To avoid the risk of being sued for negligence ask the friend to agree some terms of engagement so you both understand the scope and extent of the instruction and the advice you will be providing.
You are working for a private QS company and you have quoted your company’s fee for carrying
out a job which has been accepted. During the project you find that you have significantly
underestimated the work involved. Half way through the job you have concerns that you may not
satisfactorily be able to carry out the job for this fee. What should you do?
Complete the job despite incurring a loss as it is your mistake
A tender package is issued to 6 contractors and the return date and time is stipulated in the
package. The procurement route is Traditional with BQ. Five of the contractors submit their tenders
on time, but the 6th contractor misses the deadline and submits it late. The client instructs you (as
their QS) to open all the tenders including the late one and report the results. Unfortunately the
late tender is also the lowest tender submitted and contains no errors. What would you advise and
why? What are the consequences of the decisions that could be made?
Unethically the client could go with the 6th contractor however would face the legal repercussions if it were found out that the 6th contractor was late. (I believe it would happen that it would go onto the 5th contractor and they would receive excess profits)(The client may receive fines etc.)
Ethically: the 6th contractors tender must not be considered and it should be returned back unopened
You are working for a private QS company and a client for whom you have worked on many jobs
approaches you to undertake a project that will involve you in work in which you have no
experience. You don’t want to let the client down as they have been an excellent source of fees.
What should you do?
Ethical Answer: Advise the client that this is not your area of expertise and recommend another surveyor who you know will do a good job
Commercially Minded Answer: Hire a consultant with the expertise and still take on the Job
You are currently working on a project that is currently out to tender. One of the tenderers has
submitted their tender before the deadline date but has contacted you requesting to resubmit a
revised offer? What would you advise and why?
If they didn’t want to amend the price then it could be ok to say no cause it could be uncompetitive as a contractor may want to revise their price based on something they have heard about another tender.
The first alternative was cited in the tender documentation as the procedure for amending errors,
however the lowest tenderer submitted his tender with errors contained within. The client decided
to allow the contractor to submit a revised tender for the items subject to an error and this was still
the lowest after the amendments. Can the Client enter into a contract with this tenderer? What are
the consequences?
Yes the client can enter into a contract with this contractor however the QS must not recommended this contractor within their tender report. Penalty is that all tenderers will be paid their costs for tendering
If you put together a fee proposal but a few months into the job, realised you had under forecasted
your resources, could you go back and ask for more money?
No Chance
