What is surveying?

Surveying is a diverse and exciting career choice that can give you the opportunity to travel the world, work on a vast array of projects and earn a great salary.

You only have to take a look at the world around you to see why – behind all the houses, offices, shops, schools, roads, bridges and forests are thousands of surveyors playing a crucial role.

Surveyors are essentially professionals who measure, value, protect and enhance all the world’s physical assets – from skyscrapers to football stadiums, festival sites to forests, shopping centres to the homes you live in.

Surveying is probably the broadest of all the professions, with all sorts of career paths open to you. In fact, its diversity is one of the most exciting things about the profession, but with so many specialisms available to choose from, it can sometimes appear a little confusing!

So, to try to give you an idea of the options available, we've briefly outlined the 17 areas of specialism represented at RICS and what they cover.

The 17 specialisms are split across three groups:

When you consider that everything connected to the construction, land and property represents 70% of global wealth you start to get a better idea of just how important surveyors are to maintaining our lifestyles, protecting the planet and unlocking the value of land and mineral reserves from the earth.