BCIS – a ‘gospel’ for building surveyors

James Wellings, Chartered Building Surveyor and Partner at Wellings & Co. Chartered Surveyors (Wellings & Co. Surveyors), has used BCIS since he graduated from university in 2007.

First, to include in residential surveys at a general practice firm and later, for producing reliable reinstatement cost assessments (RCAs) in the apartment building sector.

To this day, the BCIS service remains a staple resource of Wellings & Co. Surveyors.

The BCIS reinstatement calculator (part of BCIS ProtX) is used to calculate the base rebuild figures for several hundred RCAs each year while BCIS schedule of rates (part of BCIS CapX, BCIS OpX and BCIS TotX) helps the business to determine realistic, cyclical maintenance costs in 10-year preventative maintenance plans for apartment blocks.

The reinstatement calculator, James said, is used as a ‘gospel’ to determine rates per square metre before the team makes tailored adjustments, specific to a given building.

‘If it wasn’t for BCIS, I wouldn’t know another way of establishing reliable reinstatement costs. We use the service for the base work and make necessary tweaks to rebuild costs thereafter. Without BCIS, we’d be going in blind.’

~ James Wellings, director, Wellings & Co. Surveyors

Costs rooted in credibility

Wellings & Co. Surveyors covers a broad range of surveying and project management services for the residential property sector.

It’s a business built on a network of strong relationships, primarily with managing agents large and small, and led by a specialist, close-knit team.

The aspect James is most proud of is seeing his colleagues build personal partnerships with clients he’s known for years. BCIS plays an integral role in delivering high-quality services to this network.

For James and the team, it’s also a credible resource that can stand up to scrutiny.

‘The risk for our business is getting things wrong. BCIS is an industry standard resource that gives us room to push back where needed. It’s not just down to us coming up with the figures.’

This is particularly important on the maintenance side of the firm’s work.

Naturally, some costs for work quoted by clients run higher than those first estimated by Wellings & Co. Surveyors.

Using BCIS gives weight to the arguments made by James and the team that their costs are grounded in sound data, developed through years of research from thousands of real-world construction projects.

A simple, straightforward service

Beyond the challenges it helps to address, BCIS brings Wellings & Co. Surveyors multiple benefits.

Its simplicity is the major advantage for James and the team, providing an easy way to tailor (in the case of RCAs) rebuild costs as closely as possible to the real building.

According to James, who has even created a step-by-step guide to using BCIS, everyone from graduates to Chartered Surveyors he has worked with have little trouble picking it up.

‘You don’t have to spend five days doing a training course to use BCIS. The service is very user friendly.’

Other benefits include the consistency and security of service that BCIS facilitates.

It provides immediate access to a broad range of indices, the scale of which smaller businesses like Wellings & Co. Surveyors often don’t have in-house.

For James and the team, it’s a bedrock for business.

‘I’ve not used any other software really. I don’t see why anyone wouldn’t want to use BCIS. It gives you exactly what you need.’