Quantity surveyors urged to imbibe professional ethics

Quantity surveyors have been urged to imbibe the culture of ethical conduct in the discharge of their professional duties.

Delivering her induction speech during the 2022 annual assembly of the registered quantity surveyors and induction ceremony of newly registered quantity surveyors, Esther Durlong, said unethical profession conduct has far reaching consequences for the growth and development of the society generally.

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Speaking on the theme: Ethical conduct, professionalism and general expectations of professional quantity surveyors, she said, public servants who engage in over-invoicing in connivance with contractors to loot public treasury are diverting resources which should have been deployed to provide physical and social infrastructure to improve the living standards of the people.

Three hundred and eighty-eighty (388) quantity surveyors were inducted yesterday at the 2022 annual assembly of the Quantity Surveyors Registration Board of Nigeria (QSRBN) at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

Durlong also enumerated other unethical issues bedeviling the polity such as ghost workers syndrome, election irregularities, substandard buildings and infrastructure, among others.

“Unethical conduct, immorality or negative values are devoid of ethical benchmarks. They are dangerous social evils. They can be damaging to the society, to the extent of leading to a failed state. And, like all forms of things that are wrong, the dangers are multifaceted and some of them concrete enough.

“Loss of international credibility; educational certificates

and financial institution documents are disrespected, just as agreements with the government are suspect and business becomes risky and costly,” she said.

Durlong further said other consequences of unethical practices in the polity included: International partners keeping Nigerians at a distance, reduction in quality of goods and services, companies cutting corners to improve profit margins, culture of late or delayed payments, healthcare risks, loss of foreign investment that could lead to economic growth, loss of the value of the dignity of hard work among youths as well as inability to develop tourist potential.

“The absence of ethical values has a commercial cost-sometimes that cost can be devastating. The cost is personal, commercial, professional and global.  Quantity surveyors cannot afford to be seen as anything other than an ethically responsible profession,” she added.

Also speaking, the President of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NIQS), Olayemi Shonubi, congratulated the inductees for being officially licensed to practice.

He said: “Quantity surveying is a noble and distinguishable profession and those who handed it over to us in 1969 worked tirelessly in tandem with the image of the profession and I want to admonish you that as you are going to be inducted to practice, please continue the legacy that has been laid down for all of us to practice with honesty, dignity and with respect to your professional colleagues.”

He lamented a situation where some quantity surveyors rubbish their colleagues before contractors, saying such act was capable of tarnishing the image of the profession.

While administering oath on the inductees and presenting to them their certificates,  the president of QSRBN, Alhaji Murtala Aliyu, admonished the young professionals to embrace technology and impact their work environment positively.