AI can prepare the work. A professional must stand behind it

Using AI to organise meeting notes is different from using it to prepare a cost plan, recommend a tender adjustment or assess a payment. The second group can materially affect a surveying service and therefore needs stronger control.

RICS requires regulated firms to record AI systems that could materially affect their services and to assess in writing whether AI is appropriate for the task. Members and firms still need a proportionate, recorded materiality decision. Making that decision before the output is relied on gives the team a route: routine assistance can stay light, while material cost work receives an explicit review.

A structured BOQ gives an AI addressable work items, quantities, units, resources and assumptions. Connected drawings, revisions, rates and project decisions provide context that a copied spreadsheet or isolated chat usually loses.

Keep source facts, calculations, assumptions, suggestions and unresolved gaps separate. Give the AI only the project information and authority needed for the task. Before confidential project information is uploaded to a third-party AI service, RICS expects a risk assessment and the client’s express written consent in advance. Better structure improves the first pass and makes it much easier for a professional to find what still needs judgement.

For an AI output with a material impact, RICS requires a written reliability decision prepared by, or under the supervision of, an appropriately qualified and named surveyor. It should address assumptions, concerns about the input or output, the reasons and mitigations, the effect on the service and the conclusion. High-volume work still remains the firm’s responsibility; RICS calls for randomised, regular dip samples rather than an assumed safe sample size.

The review should focus on the things that can move the decision: scope completeness, quantity sources, rate basis, project conditions, unusual values and unresolved risk. Record who reviewed the work, what they checked, what changed and why the final position was accepted or held.

RICS requires relevant client terms to explain in advance when, why and where AI will be used, as well as any available process to contest the use or opt out. Regulated firms also need wider controls: a system register, risk register, supplier due diligence, assigned responsibilities and annual training. The project record should support that process by preserving the system used, its sources, the reviewed output and the accepted professional decision.

A platform can remove much of the practical burden by keeping that evidence with the work and producing a clear review trail. The member or regulated firm still owns its policies, client terms and professional judgement, including explaining the role of AI if asked. That boundary is important: good software helps a firm operate and demonstrate its controls; it does not issue blanket compliance.