A Career in Construction - Part 2

It was my mother who found the advertisement, possibly in the newspaper. George Wimpey (at the time the biggest construction company in the world) were looking for school leavers with two A Levels to join their company training scheme for Quantity Surveyors. Coming to the end of Sixth Form, I already had an offer from Hull University to read Economics. But the grades they required seemed quite ambitious for my capabilities. I had thought about a career in architecture, but I had no talent for drawing. The next best thing seemed to surveying, and a book described all the different kinds surveyor. There did not seem to be many openings to train as a Building Surveyor (my preference) and Quantity Surveyors seemed to operate in private practice. So training with a Building Contractor was an unexpected opportunity.

I went for an interview at the Hammersmith Head Office of George Wimpey. I guess there were a huge number of applicants. While I was waiting for the result, some friends at school suggested I had no chance. One particularly bright pupil from the year above had an interview but never made it. So I was pretty pleased when I was shortlisted for a second interview and finally made an offer that I accepted. As expected, my A Level grades were not good enough for Hull. My mother was actually amazed that I had scraped through all three subjects.

I have one vivid memory of the summer before I started work. Sitting alone in the front room of the house in Braintree (a sitting room that was hardly ever used) listening to some records and wondering what life would be like. I was leaving home to live in digs in Barnes, working in an office five days a week and going to college in Brighton. And being paid; I was, in fact, an indentured trainee. My father and I had to sign a form of indenture and this set out my remuneration over the five years.

I started on £350 per annum. This was supplemented by £2 and 15 Shillings per week lodging allowance. My digs were in Riverview Gardens. There were two of us. Derek Anderson and I shared a bedroom and the Irish landlady provided breakfast and an evening meal. Most of the trainees were always short of cash, but I found I could save a little, and was able to buy a Grundig tape recorder within a few months.

For our first year, we trainees were based at The Hammersmith head office. So every morning I walked over Hammersmith Bridge to get to work. We were attached to the Quantity Surveying team under George Vickery who produced Bills of Quantities for tenders throughout the country which were then passed to Central Estimating to price. Our task for most of that year was squaring the dimensions. There is a chapter in Elements of Quantity Surveying by Arthur J Willis (our bible for that first year) which explains all this.

The following example shows how measurements are taken off and set down on dimension paper.

Of course, these are in in feet and inches and it was our job to do the calculations in duodecimals. So you see that the third column below now has these figures.

This was all done by hand, no calculators for us in those days for duodecimals. There were the first movements towards mechanisation, but as Willis says in his More Advanced Quantity Surveying, "One cannot but feel that machines are excellent as an aid to the human brain, but that we are professional men (wow) not machine minders and that our brains have a part to play".

So our brains were worn out squaring dimensions all day, every day. Even more taxing was the checking of another's squaring. We were told that any errors were down to the checker, not the original squarer. It was therefore a relief when were able to take the process to the next stage of casting the dimensions and preparing the abstract from which the final Bill of Quantities would be produced.

I guess the idea was that we would become familiar with the measurements we were squaring, as the taking off of those measurements from a pile of drawings was then the fundamental business of a Quantity Surveyor.