The Role of Quantity Surveyors In Combating Corruption.

Globally, large-scale development projects are vulnerable to extreme cost increases caused by several factors. Malaysia, as in many other countries, has a problem in managing corruption issues, where the process should have been utilized to benefit the individual or company in the other sense of the conflict of interest, often during the pre and post stage of the contract itself.

The involvement of competent Quantity Surveyors in the project professional team has been seen to provide certainty and control of project requirements, while also helping to reduce costs. High-scale development projects tend to be complex efforts from the beginning and can be more complicated when design changes are introduced without government and professional teams who are aware of cost implications.

One of the key issues in any project is to ensure the tender is given to the right priced properly. Quantity Surveyors play an important role here as they are trained to manage the financial and legislative processes of a project. During the design stage, the Quantity Surveyors arrangement is a tool to ensure the design remains in the budget. During the procurement stage, Quantity Surveyors produce the Bills of Quantities (BoQ) which are part of the Tender Document, where tender and fair are based. BoQ is the main document that provides customers with the knowledge of how many projects will be spent before construction begins, which are invaluable in evaluating the tender before they are awarded.

Experience and professional training of Quantity Surveyors make them the best people to evaluate tenders. "BoQ acts as the basis for the entire project. Any subsequent additions or omissions to the project will also be evaluated and calculated using BoQ as a guideline, the surveyor then acts as a supervisor throughout the project: monitoring progress against BoQ, authorizing payment as work completed, merging deviations from the tender and, ultimately, result in a final account and can defend it to any shareholder.

The Quantity Surveying skills are very important as they can handle any unexpected turnover and management review, which allows architects, engineers and the whole team of professionals to focus on their own tasks.

To have the greatest impact, Quantity Surveyors should be directly involved from the project's initial stage and also engage in planning and qualification reports in addition to the approval of the actual acquisition strategy.

Therefore, I recommend that the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission be able to locate competent Quantity Surveyors in the appointed team to investigate the costs associated with the misconduct and conflict of interest of large scale development projects.

As long as the cost of large-scale development projects in Malaysia is not certified and run professionally, each will threaten the welfare of the nation's economy. Malaysia has officially practiced value principles for money to combat corruption in the construction sector.