Hi, I'm new to the site, joined today. I currently work as an Assistant Quantity Surveyor and go to University part time doing an RICS accredited degree in Quantity Surveying. I should hopefully finish this year and may look to move abroad, possibly the US. There may be opportunities with my current employer abroad but I was just wandering if anyone here has any experience/advice on the subject, thanks.

http://www.aspenational.org/

Hi there....my wife is a UK qualified QS. Very few States in the US recognize the UK QS qualifications but from the research my wife did, Texas and New York do appear to recognize the UK qualifications.

We're in Texas, and at a party last week I happened to bump into a Scottish QS who is working in Houston on the basis of his UK RICS certification. Not sure if it makes a difference that he is working for a UK company (Turner & Townsend), but a couple of job applications should soon reveal whether it is recognized over here by US employers or not....

RICS is the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors...I believe it's a different animal to Quantity Surveyors.

Nope, RICS covers all sorts of surveying - think they had about 15 different categories (may be more now), one of which was QS.

Fair enough...it was several decades ago since I had anything to do with the RICS.

Hey...nice to see you back.

I am a chartered QS working for Gardiner & Theobald in New York. Their staff are predominantly RICS and they have just taken on a recently qualified QS from the UK. Prior to G&T I was with Faithful & Gould where I would say only about a third of the staff were RICS so it varies from company to company as to the emphasis they place on RICS accreditation. RICS Americas have a reasonable careers center section on their website. I am on an E2 visa and the Employer arranged this. As the QS is recognized as one of the professions where there is no direct American equivalent getting the visa approved was reasonably straightforward.

Thanks for all the replies, I am in the last year of my degree so if I wanted to do the RICS chartership that would take at least another year. I was hoping the degree, which is RICS accredited would be sufficient to look at moving abroad.

I'm having a bad day today and just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I actually laughed out loud which is not something I thought that I'd be able to do today.

much appreciated

Happy to help! Hope your day gets better.

Hi,
I am a Chartered QS living & working in Cleveland Ohio for the last 3.5 years. I work for a wholly American company in construction management and dispute resolution, and until I applied for the job they had never heard of the RICS. My experience is that few American companies know who the RICS is unless they are British such as Faithful & Gould, Turner Townsend, Gleeds, etc etc. If you want to work in the US then unless you have other immigration options you will need to get sponsored by an employer. A friend of mine did this through Faithful & Gould - but one thing you need to consider is that such a sponsorship restricts you to only being able to work for that company and you cant easily move or apply for other jobs. Given your experience, you would probably be best going the sponsorship route. My current employer was motivated by my 27 years of experience rather than the RICS. Pity, because they still charge the same subscription fees