Outsourcing consultant quantity surveying activities during the post-pandemic era

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has left a significant impact on the survival of the global construction industry and its stakeholders including quantity surveyors. Outsourcing is recognised as a business strategy which can be tried for consultants quantity surveying organisations for surviving in the construction industry during a pandemic period. Due to the absence of previous studies that evaluated the effectiveness of outsourcing consultants quantity surveying activities in the Sri Lankan context following the pandemic, this study intends to fill the aforementioned research gap. As a result, the research was aimed at examining the feasibility of outsourcing key consultants' quantity surveying activities in the Sri Lankan context following the pandemic. A thorough literature review was carried out in order to investigate the possibility of outsourcing key consultant quantity surveying activities in Sri Lanka during the post-pandemic era. To achieve the goal of this research, a mixed-method approach with structured expert interviews and a questionnaire survey was used. Thematic analysis using QSR Nvivo version 12 software and the RII method was used to analyse the data. The most suitable activities for outsourcing in Sri Lanka during the post-pandemic era were identified as BIM model creation, BOQ preparation, and BOQ verification. The study's findings revealed the possibility of outsourcing the quantity surveying activities of consultants in Sri Lanka during the post-pandemic era. Furthermore, the findings of this study can be used to identify prevalent motivating factors for introducing or improving the outsourcing concept as well as to put into practice within consultant quantity surveying organisations.