The New Zealand Institute of Quantity Surveyors (NZIQS) has joined a new global movement established to create international standards in construction measurement.

The International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS) Coalition was formed in June 2015 by non-profit organisations representing construction industry professionals in over 140 countries.

In an industry estimated to be worth a staggering $15 trillion by 2025, inconsistency in something as fundamental as construction measurement and reporting can create huge uncertainty, misunderstanding, and risk.

Collectively, the ICMS aims to create over-arching international standards that will harmonise cost, classification and measurement definitions in order to enhance comparability, consistency, statistics, and benchmarking of capital projects.

“We see this as a very valuable initiative in which New Zealand’s construction measurement professionals – quantity surveyors – must play an active role,” said NZIQS president, Jeremy Shearer.

The formation of the ICMS marks the first time the global construction, project management, cost engineering and quantity surveying sectors have come together in this way to develop unifying standards which reflect and enhance the increasingly international construction market.

“Establishing and being able to work with standardised, international guidelines will be good for the local quantity surveying profession, and for the wider New Zealand construction industry as a whole,” Shearer said.