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Quantity surveying in South Africa is a well-established professional discipline providing consulting services to the construction industry. The continued prosperity of a professional discipline such as quantity surveying is closely linked to sound management and efficient strategic leadership. The leaders and managers of the profession require accurate and up-to-date information on the profile of their members to integrate that information into future strategies and planning.Young democracies and developing countries such as South Africa often have demographics and financial industries, including the construction industry, that are much more dynamic than first-world countries such as the United States or Great Britain. Local government upliftment policies such as black economic empowerment changed the economic landscape. The membership profile of the quantity surveying profession is also seeing rapid change, presenting additional management challenges. A profession with a stable profile is easy to manage using past knowledge of membership makeup and preferences. However, a changing membership may cause strategies based on the knowledge of 5 to 10 years ago to be found wanting today.The recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted economies and industries and did not spare the construction industry or the quantity surveying profession. During this time, the South African Association of Quantity Surveyors (ASAQS), assisted by the University of Pretoria, analysed the profile of its members employing a questionnaire forwarded to all ASAQS members on the database. This data confirmed significant changes to the age and racial makeup of the profession. However, the changed gender profile was amongst the study’s most significant findings. In the past, the typical South African quantity surveyor was a middle age to older male of European descent. This study will contrast the older members of the profession against the more recent entrants by comparing the profile of female members to that of male members. The analysis will include age, race, locational spread, academic qualifications, nationality, registration status with the Council of South African Quantity Surveyors, and length of the current employment term to provide a reasonably detailed comparison of the gender profile of quantity surveyors in South Africa.The above information will be valuable to the Association of South African Quantity Surveyors and to the management of quantity surveying firms and institutions such as universities that offer accredited academic programmes to train quantity surveyors. The findings can also be shared with quantity surveying professionals across international borders to compare against the profiles of their millennial cohorts of quantity surveyors.

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The future growth and prosperity of an organisation or in this case of the professional discipline of quantity surveying in South Africa have strong links with effective succes-sion planning. The next generation will be measured on how well they will be able to build on the successes and stature of the preceding generations. The success and prosperi-ty that the South Africa quantity surveying profession will enjoy during the next decade or more rests on the shoulders of the current generation of new entrants and young profes-sionals recently established in the profession. This younger generation of professionals also belongs to the age group often referred to as millennials.Millennials are people born between 1980 – 2000 and who are therefore currently be-tween 21 to 41 years of age. In 2020, approximately 60% of all registered quantity sur-veyors in South Africa were millennials. This cohort will become the future leaders and visionaries to carry the profession of quantity surveying into the future.Contrasting to previous generations the millennials have grown up and were educated and trained in the electronic and digital age. Their differing roots may carry with it chal-lenges that may hamper effective communication with the current leadership of the pro-fession. The better the current leaders are able to know and understand the millennials in their fold, the more likely a successfull passing of the batten to the next generation will become. This study is based on a questionnaire from the Association of South African Quantity Surveyors, assisted by the University of Pretoria. The questionnaire was distributed on a national bases to all the South African quantity surveyors on the data base. The study will evaluate various aspects that describe the profile of South African mil-lennial quantity surveyors. The aspects that will be compared include the age, gender, race, and locational spread of the millenails who participated in the survey. Additional aspects such as their academic qualifications, nationality, registration status with the Council of South African Quantity Surveyors, and their length of term of current em-ployment will be used to provide a reasonably detailed description of the younger genera-tion of South African quantity surveyors.The above information will be of value to the Association of South African Quantity Surveyors, to the management of quantity surveying firms and also to institutions such as universities that offer accredited academic programmes for the training of quantity sur-veyors. The findings can also be shared with quantity surveying professions across inter-national borders to compare against the profiles of their millennial cohorts of quantity surveyors.