If quantity surveyors (QSs) are expected to do "what it says on the tin", then their job is to survey quantities. But is that all they are required to do, or are they required to check for quality as well?

A couple decide to refurbish their home. They approach an architect to prepare designs for the project; a contractor is employed under a JCT IFC (Intermediate Form of Building Contract) and they engage a QS to assist with monthly valuations. So far, so completely normal. The works are not to the couple's liking, so they claim for damages in respect of alleged defects to their house. Unfortunate, but not unprecedented.

In a surprising twist, however, the couple allege that everyone involved in the project is responsible for all of the defects in the house. From the QS's perspective, this is puzzling as he simply valued the work. How, then, might he be liable for defects in it? The question is: when carrying out inspections for the purposes of monthly valuations, is the QS required to survey for quality as well as quantity?

It appears that a court has never been directly asked to answer this question, until now. In the ongoing case of Dhamija v Sunningdale Joineries & ors (2010), the claimants alleged that the QS was responsible for surveying quality as well as quantity. They sought to amend their pleadings to impose a duty on the QS "to only value work that had been properly executed by the contractor and was not obviously defective". The claimants' case was that the QS should have refused to value "obviously defective" works (a statement which remains undefined) and that, by valuing them, the QS made himself liable for those defective works.

This is a case which Coulson J has roundly rejected – firmly disagreeing with the editors of Hudson's Building and Engineering Contracts (1995) in the process. In Hudson, the editors opined that, given the skill and experience of QSs, there was "no reason" why they should not be liable for defects where they "were so glaring that they should have been seen by [them] in the course of valuation inspections". This is a passage which the learned judge dismissed as "wholly unreliable".

The issue of a QS's liability to inspect for defects was canvassed in Sutcliffe v Chippendale & Edmondson (1971); however, that case concerned an allegation of negligence against a firm of architects, who claimed their duties did not extend to telling the QS to exclude defective work from the valuations. Judge Stabb QC (as he then was) found that the architects did have an obligation in those terms. Although evidence was given in Sutcliffe to the effect that "where work was clearly wrong, it had to be excluded" by the QS, Coulson J found that that evidence formed no part of the judgment in Sutcliffe and it therefore did not create a rule as to the extent of a QS's liability.

Where does this leave QSs? They still have, in the judge's view, an implied duty "to act with the reasonable skill and care of quantity surveyors of ordinary competence and experience when valuing the works properly executed for the purposes of the interim certificates". Whether that duty means, in Dhamija, that the QS is liable for the defective works remains unclear, since Coulson J has ordered a preliminary issue hearing to decide the extent of the duty and whether the QS breached it. However, QSs should be encouraged by the judge's comments that the claimants' case appears "somewhat forlorn", may be "hopeless", and will be "something of an uphill task". Thus, provided the QS liaises with the person certifying interim payments about defects, and carries out their valuation with all due skill and care, it appears that QSs are not normally expected to be the arbiters of quality.

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