Building for the future 

RICS is committed to collaborating with others and remaining future-focused. This ensures that the profession evolves and adapts to the industry’s biggest challenges. We are working to ensure that we build for the future both as an organisation and as a profession.

Sustainability

RICS is focusing on developing practical solutions that enable the profession to help drive positive change where they are now and for the future. Collaborating with others is a major part of this process. 

Consultation launch (5 July)

International Cost Management Standard 3

With the built environment responsible for around 40% of global carbon emissions, RICS has worked as a member of the International Cost Management Standard Coalition, along with 47 globally prominent organisations, to pioneer sustainable practices by developing ICMS 3. This standard is a world first for cost and carbon management in construction, from concept to completion and beyond. It will enable governments and non-governmental organisations to compare construction project costs and carbon emissions to those around the world, creating transparency and consistency in the sector globally. 

This standard will contribute positively to efforts to decarbonise the construction sector in the most cost-effective way. Through ICMS 3, professionals will for the first time be empowered to deliver a globally consistent method for carbon life cycle reporting across construction projects, from buildings and bridges to ports and offshore structures.

To ensure the standard is fit for purpose, RICS, along with the members of the ICMS coalition, launched a consultation on 5 July, open to a wide range of built environment professionals, from quantity surveyors and building surveyors to engineers, architects, and environmentalists.

Over the last year RICS has been developing and preparing a new global guidance note: Sustainability and ESG in commercial property valuation and strategic advice.

We have held:

two global webinars
a series of global advisory forums
an eight-week digital conversation on our insight community

We have gathered insight from a wide range of stakeholders globally, including governments, investors, regulators, valuers and built environment professionals.

The proposed guidance note aims to deliver practical and globally-relevant principles for the delivery of the sustainability and environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements of clients through the overarching standards contained in our RICS Global – Valuation Standards (Red Book).

Influencing EU green finance policy

As a member of the EU Technical Working Group (TEG) on sustainable finance appointed by the European Commission, RICS led the built environment strand of a comprehensive EU strategy that fully supports the transition towards a sustainable economy – one of the key priorities of the European Commission and the UN Sustainable Development agenda.

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Online professional assessments

Securing the profession’s future growth and talent pipeline through the demand for qualifications remains paramount. Increased emphasis on ensuring the profession has access to knowledge development and competence growth through a global digital platform has also become a greater priority.

In 2020/21 7,507 new candidates enrolled for an assessment.

351 AssocRICS assessments were held.
4,869 MRICS assessments were held.
4,226 new AssocRICS and MRICS were elected to the register of members.

Chartered surveyor final assessment interviews continued to be delivered online. The implementation of a new digital platform towards the end of 20/21 has affected our ability to deliver our assessment programme, and has had a significant impact on candidates and firms.   We continue to work with candidates and key stakeholders about these challenges, and are committed to delivering improvements to our assessment programme through 21/22.

Our assessors are integral to the success of the assessment process: they provide their time and expertise but, most importantly, function as the gatekeepers to the profession. It is our assessors who protect the standards of those qualifying with RICS and without their support our assessments cannot proceed. Our new online training programme is designed to support them in this critical role.

To support our continuous improvement program, we have appointed a steering group to oversee a review of all entry and assessment processes and make recommendations for future changes.

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assessors have been trained using a blended approach of e-learning and live webinars.