Careers
Design and quantity surveying technician
Before a site starts, someone has counted every cubic metre, every kilogram of steel and every labour hour. The design and quantity surveying technician produces that pricing: it is what makes a bid winnable and a site workable.
Work in the design office
Everything starts from the drawings. The surveyor reads them, breaks them down and derives defensible quantities, item by item. Then comes the unit price breakdown: materials, labour, plant, site costs, margin — every line defensible to a client as much as to your own management. The tender file then gathers technical and administrative documents, within the strict deadlines of a call for bids. After award, the same pricing serves as the reference for site monitoring.
- Read a drawing set and extract defensible quantities
- Build a unit price breakdown defensible line by line
- Assemble a tender response file within the deadline
- Compare actual to priced work and account for every variance
Who needs a quantity surveyor
- General building and civil engineering contractors
- Technical design offices and architectural practices
- Public and private clients running building programmes
- Specialist trades: electrical, plumbing, waterproofing, finishing
- Mining and industrial companies managing their capital works
What the commitment represents
Training takes time, and that time can be counted. Here is how many months, how many taught hours, how many credits, and for what recognised level of responsibility. You can set these figures beside your professional calendar and decide with full knowledge, which is the only way to see a programme through.
- qualification level
- 5
- months of programme
- 10
- taught hours
- 700 h
- credits
- 70
- competency blocks
- 5
Senior technician and supervisor
Led by an instructor.
1 credit = 25 h of work, 10 of them taught.
Framework of the « Design and Quantity Surveying Technician » qualification, code TP53.
The programme, exactly as filed
What you read here is the filed content, with no marketing rewrite. Each block carries its official title, its scope and its taught hours. It is the document a panel consults, the one an employer receives when funding, and the one the final certificate rests on.
| Competency block | What it covers | Taught hours |
|---|---|---|
| Reading and producing drawings | Working drawings, sections, details, computer-aided design tools | 190 h |
| Quantity surveying | All-trades measurement, preliminary take-off, ratios, checking | 200 h |
| Estimating and quotations | Unit rates, direct costs, coefficients, priced bills of quantities | 170 h |
| Tendering and contract documents | Specifications, inviting tenders, analysing bids | 100 h |
| Professional conduct | Precision, recording assumptions, working with the works supervisor | 40 h |
Training in works pricing
The path to this occupation is chosen on facts: how long, how many hours with an instructor, how many recognised credits and what amount in Guinean francs. The table gathers them for every open option, in the order a candidate reviews them before filing an application.
| Programme | Duration | Credits | Taught hours | Fees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project Management Certificate · Professional certification | 6 months | 18 | 180 h | 2 900 000 GNF in total |
| Advanced Excel · Short course | 2 months | 4 | 40 h | 900 000 GNF in total |
Three questions, three precise answers
Is a spreadsheet enough for pricing?
It remains the most widespread tool in the region, and a surveyor with real command of it saves considerable time: price libraries, control formulas, variant comparison. That is why the short advanced spreadsheet course appears in the programme table.
Can I come from site work?
It is arguably the best possible background: someone who has built knows what a task really costs in time. The qualification supplies the breakdown method, detailed drawing reading and the formal requirements of tender files.
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