Abstract:
The degree of social responsibility of professionals towards public projects are naturally
high. Recently, in Sri Lankan context, expressway construction is becoming one of the
major public project types. Due to that, the responsibility of professionals towards a
successful expressway construction seems very high. Among professionals, Quantity
Surveyor (QS) is a significant team member in any kind of construction project in terms
of managing cost and time aspects. Being highly technical and complex, expressway QSs
essentially need a significant level of construction technology knowledge to perform the
duties and responsibilities. Therefore, the research was focused on investigating the
significance of expressway construction technology knowledge for QS practitioners. The
scope of the research was narrowed down to Sri Lankan expressway projects. A
comprehensive literature review was carried out to identify the duties and
responsibilities of QSs in expressway project stages. The research methodology was
mixed approached comprising a questionnaire survey and s expert interviews round.
Quantitative data analysis was carried out using RII method and qualitative data
subjected to content analysis. The research concludes feasibility stage as the most
technical knowledge sensitive stage of an expressway construction project with respect
to the QS’s role. Further, QSs with less experience make projects vulnerable for more
cost and time issues due to lack of technical knowledge and such scenarios may add
black marks to the role of the QS in big picture, therefore it is essential for the QSs to
keep updated with the changing construction technologies.
