Forecasting the manpower demand for quantity surveyors in Hong Kong

Recently, there has been a massive infrastructure development and an increasing demand for public and private housing, resulting in a shortage of qualified quantity surveyors. This study aims to forecast the demand for qualified quantity surveyors in Hong Kong from 2013 to 2015. Literature review indicates that the demand for quantity surveyors is a function of the gross values of building, civil engineering and maintenance works. The proposed forecasting method consists of two steps. The first step is to estimate the gross values of building, civil engineering and maintenance works by time series methods and the second step is to forecast the manpower demand for quantity surveyors by causal methods. The data for quantity surveyors and construction outputs are based on the ‘manpower survey reports of the building and civil engineering industry’ and the ‘gross value of construction works performed by main contractors’ respectively. The forecasted manpower demand for quantity surveyors in 2013, 2014 and 2015 are 2,480, 2,632 and 2,804 respectively. Due to the low passing rate of the assessment of professional competence (APC) and the increasing number of retired qualified members, there will be a serious shortage of qualified quantity surveyors in the coming three years.

A Critical Review of Forecasting Models to Predict Manpower Demand

Forecasting manpower requirements has been useful for economic planners, policy makers and training providers in order to avoid the imbalance of skills in the labour market. Although reviews of the manpower planning models have been conducted previously, with the accumulated experience and the booming of advanced statistical techniques and computer programs, the study of forecasting practices has undrgone considerable changes and achieved maturity during the past decade. This paper assesses the latest employment and manpower dmand estimating methods by examining their rationale, strength and constraints. It aims to identify enhancements for further development of manpower forecasting model for the construction industry and compare the reliability and capacity of different forecasting metodologies. It is cocluded that the top-down forecasting approach is the dominant methodology to forecast occupational manpower demand. It precedes other methodologies by its dynamic nature and sensitivity to aa variety of factors affecting the level and structure of employment. Given the improvement of the data available, advanced modelling techniques and computer programs, manpower planning is likely to be more accessible with improved accuracy at every level of the society.