1. First RICS associate named
1 July 2011 | By Christine Eade.
When Jamie Kessack, a quantity surveyor with Surrey-based Greenway Associates, returns to Cairo this
autumn to resume work on the new Grand Egyptian Museum, he will be putting AssocRICS after his name
He is the first to attain associate status, two years after the RICS began offering this qualification to
quantity surveyors, facilities managers and those engaged in residential anagement.
About 900 property people with vocational qualifications are registered with the RICS. Kessack, 36, is the
first to attain the status of associate. He left Robert May’s School in Hampshire, without A levels, then
studied for a BTEC in construction at technical colleges in Basingstoke and Guildford, before joining Amec
in 1993.
He pursued qualifications through the Chartered Institute of Building and worked for contractors James
Longley, which was taken over by Kier, and Leadbitter. In 2005 Mark Greenway invited Kessack to join
Greenway, and put him to work on several museums – in Cairo, on the Massar Children’s Discovery Centre
in Damascus, the Jewish museum in Warsaw and the Ashmolean in Oxford.
“I haven’t been to Cairo this year,” he says. “But now the project has gone live again, and I hope to go back
in August or September.” About the associate scheme, Kessack (pictured) says: “I had to provide
commentary on what I had done and add an ethics module. I worked on it during evenings and weekends
for three months.” He is now considering whether to qualify as a chartered quantity surveyor.
The RICS announced last month that it was adding seven specialisms to the five launched in 2009 for
property people without degrees. Associate status will be offered to commercial property managers,
valuers, building surveyors and those involved in building control, land and engineering surveying,
hydrographic surveying and residential property management. n