RICS has published the UK snapshot of its Surveying skills report, a November 2026 cut of the global survey it released on 15 October. The figures tell a fairly straightforward story. In the UK, 50% of respondents say skills shortages are having a critical or moderate impact on their organisation.
The profession also has some catching up to do on AI. While 23% say they are not prepared to use generative AI, AI analytics and related tools, another 35% feel only slightly prepared. In other words, 58% do not yet feel equipped to work with these technologies. Only 8% say they are 'well prepared' and 4% say 'very well prepared'.
Put those two findings together and you have the story. The firms that price, programme and certify the homes and infrastructure the government wants built say they cannot meet current demand, cannot find time to train the people they have, and are not equipped for the tools they list as part of the fix. For anyone running a QS, PM or building surveying team, that is a description of next year's resourcing plan.
A disclosure before going further: James Garner, Project Flux's co-founder and an RICS panel member, is quoted in the report, and his view on AI in surveying education appears below.
What RICS actually published
The UK snapshot is short, ten pages of charts and commentary drawn from UK responses to the global survey. RICS does not state how many UK members answered, so treat the percentages as indicative. Build in Digital reports that the global survey ran from June to August 2026 with research partner Savanta, weighted by age, membership grade, region and gender.
On impact, RICS reports that 63% of respondents say shortages are reducing capacity to meet demand, 55% have limited time or resources to train or upskill existing staff, 37% report reduced quality of work, and 33% each cite increased costs and lost revenue.
RICS adds a caveat worth keeping: activity is flat at present, so these are the numbers at the bottom of the cycle. Its own reading is that the sector 'would struggle to fully respond if there were a material uplift in development' to meet the government's housing and infrastructure ambitions.
Scotland comes out the worst of the four nations. By our reading of RICS's chart, critical and moderate responses there add up to 62%, which RICS attributes partly to course closures, rural and island pressures and severe strain in building control, building surveying and valuation.
The shortage has moved up the career ladder
Last year's RICS report was about an ageing workforce and a thin graduate intake. This year the problem is in the middle. Asked about the main drivers of UK shortages, 62% of respondents point to a shortage of mid-career and experienced professionals, 47% to early-career professionals and new entrants, and 43% to retention. High retirement comes in at 26%, and 20% say technological change is outpacing training.
The global report says the same thing with slightly different figures: 60% mid-career, 42% early-career, 42% retention.
The sector's skills gap is not a recruitment problem. It is a retention challenge which belies a recruitment problem. In effect, the skills crisis has moved up the career ladder.
For a practice, the person you most need, the five-to-fifteen-year surveyor who can run a job unsupervised, is the person every competitor wants and the one most likely to leave if progression stalls. Recruiting more graduates does not close that gap. Graduates need the same mid-career people to train them, and 55% of firms say they already lack the time.
Betting on tools nobody is trained to use
Asked for their top three responses to future skills gaps, 42% of UK respondents pick upskilling and training current staff, the top answer by a wide margin. Improving retention through reward and progression comes next at 31%, then adopting AI, automation and digital tools to increase productivity at 30%. Only 18% plan to target career switchers from adjacent professions, which is odd given that mid-career is where the hole is.
So 30% of firms name AI as a top-three response, while 58% of the profession says it is not or only slightly prepared to use it, and 25% say moderately prepared. That gap between intent and competence is the most important finding in the report. Respondents ranked communication, collaboration and stakeholder management and critical thinking and learning agility as the top future skills, both at 47%, ahead of data analytics and digital tools at 44%.
RICS reads that as evaluating and communicating become more prominent in a tech-enabled world. Fair enough, but you cannot evaluate an AI output in a domain where you were never taught what good looks like.
Justin Young, RICS chief executive, framed the stake in comments reported by Property Industry Eye: 'AI offers opportunities to improve productivity, but adopting technology requires investment in people. We need to equip surveyors to use these tools responsibly, combining digital skills with the professional judgement clients rely on.'
The practical reading is that an AI licence bought without training time is just a cost.
James's contribution to the report goes further.
Too many universities still tell students to avoid AI rather than teaching them to use it responsibly; we tried the same with computers in the 1980s, and it did not age well. AI must become a core, formally assessed part of surveying education. The profession's future depends on it.
Agree with formal assessment or not, the next intake will arrive with whatever habits their course allowed.
Competence matters more than access. In a randomised trial Anthropic published on 27 October, 50 professional analysts working with an AI coding agent went with the option the agent had been secretly assigned to favour 86% of the time, and 77% later repeated the agent's arguments as their own while only 15% credited it. Anthropic says it deliberately strengthened the agent's lean, so real-world rates may be lower.
Even so, a surveyor who is 'slightly prepared' is exactly the person most likely to sign off an AI cost plan without noticing which assumptions were theirs. Antony Slumbers, in a 3 November essay, places cost planning and building surveying among the property functions 'adjusting now', his term for the junior squeeze.
RICS is rebuilding the route slowly
RICS points to its Qualifications and Professional Development programme as part of the answer: modular learning and assessment aligned with Skills England's recommendations, recognition of prior learning, a possible RICS Academy for career-long CPD, and new MRICS pathways in Sustainability Advisory and Data Analytics and Intelligence.
On its own programme page RICS says the APC model has been largely unchanged for almost 30 years, that implementation will take three to five years, and that for now it is 'business as usual' on the current route.
As a profession, we cannot address the skills challenge by focusing solely on recruitment. The real opportunity lies in creating sustainable career pathways that attract, develop and retain talent throughout the profession.
That is the right diagnosis, but a three-to-five-year programme does nothing for a firm that cannot fill a senior QS role this quarter. Modular routes may help career switchers and associates progress. They will not produce mid-career surveyors any faster than time does.
Takeaway
The report says the surveying profession is short of exactly the people who train others, has no time to train, and is counting on tools it has not learned. Those three facts compound, and they are not confined to RICS members: the same mid-career squeeze and training deficit show up in any PM, cost or contracting team that depends on experienced people to supervise the rest.
The firms that come out of this well will treat training time as infrastructure rather than slack and build AI competence into how work is reviewed as well as which software is licensed. Waiting for RICS to finish redesigning the qualification is not a plan.
Put a number on training time in next year's budget and protect it like a utilisation target, because 55% of RICS respondents say it is the first thing to go.
Give retention of five- to fifteen-year staff its own owner, since 62% of respondents say this is the gap and 43% cite retention.
Assess AI competence before rolling out AI tools, and make reviewing AI-assisted outputs a named responsibility.
Ask whether you should join the 18% targeting career switchers, because the modular RICS route is being designed for that candidate.
Project Flux reads the RICS reports and the AI research so you do not have to and says what a UK surveyor or project professional should do about them. If you want the skills and AI competence story followed through the QPD programme and beyond, subscribe at projectflux.ai.
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All content reflects our personal views and is not intended as professional advice or to represent any organisation.
