Employee stories

Jacob

Commercial Management and Quantity Surveying, University of Manchester
Graduate Quantity Surveyor
Balfour Beatty Engineering Services

Right now I'm working on the building of a brand new school in Liverpool, as part of the Building Schools for the Future Project. It's going to be a specialist theatre college, so quite a lot of money's being spent on the building's aesthetics. The part I'm working on is the £5million mechanical and electrical services installation.

My role is to manage the financial accounts involved in the installation's delivery. I specifically deal with the accounts of the subcontractors working on the job, which involves things like processing payments and reporting costs. But the part I find most interesting is the meetings where we work towards agreeing contracts at the most competitive value. As a Quantity Surveyor, my aim is always to improve my projects' cost effectiveness strategies. Achieving this is really rewarding, and it delivers results for the business too.

There are a lot of standard forms and procedures involved in my line of work, and as most of the training is on the job, there's something new to learn with every project. It's all really valuable, as I want to progress on to larger value projects and, eventually, a commercial management role.