RICS offers ‘significant opportunity’ for Scotland to gain competitive advantage in attracting inward investors

Efforts to attract private inward investment to Scotland’s infrastructure sector could be given a significant boost through the adoption of new global construction standards, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).RICS states that adopting International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS) would make the country more attractive to international investors – providing greater transparency, consistency and certainty for them.The RICS Construction Market survey has reported almost consistent growth in infrastructure workloads during the last four years in Scotland. Additionally, Ernst & Young’s 2018 Scotland Attractiveness Survey highlighted a 7% increase in the number of foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in Scotland, solidifying its reputation as the most attractive FDI destination in the UK after London. Therefore, the need for more accurate reporting of costs in construction and infrastructure projects is critical not only in terms of attracting investors, but also for assessing the economic viability of projects and maximising their impact.International Construction Measurement Standards (ICMS) is a high-level international standard that aims to provide greater global consistency in the classification, definition, measurement, analysis and presentation of construction costs at a project, regional, state or national/ international level.The standard has been written by a group of independent industry leaders. The International Construction Measurement Standards Coalition (ICMSC) is a growing group of more than 40 professional and not-for-profit organisations from around the world, working together to develop and implement international standards for benchmarking, measuring and reporting construction project cost.