The Institution of Surveyors was inaugurated in the United Kingdom in 1868 covering even at that early date a wide variety of surveying functions. The initial membership included auctioneers, appraisers and valuers, road surveyors, land surveyors, land agents, estate managers and quantity surveyors. Subsequently the name was changed to the Surveyors Institution. It was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria in 1881, changed its name to the Chartered Surveyors Institution in 1930, and assumed its present title of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) in 1946. RICS maintained a branch in Hong Kong from 1929 to 1997.
The Hong kong Institute of Surveyors was formed in 1984. All of its founding members were Chartered Surveyors. It has a close relationship with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. The two professional institutes maintain reciprocal arrangement for their members.
Quantity Surveying, the financial management of the construction process, first achieved public recognition as a professional discipline distinct from architecture or engineering in the 1830s. Following the destruction by fire of the Old Palace of Westminster in 1834, the new Houses of Parliament were designed by Sir Charles Barry in 1836. This was the first major public contract in Britain to be fully measured and tendered using detailed bills of quantities.
Today the quantity surveyor is a highly trained professional with a background of tertiary education and an expert knowledge in cost management, contract management and project management related to building and civil engineering contracts.
Rider Levett Bucknall has been deeply involved in the development of the quantity surveying profession in Hong Kong and Mainland China and the training of local quantity surveyors in the region.