The RICS Code of Measurement Practice or COMP has been used by surveyors of all disciplines for years. It determines how we calculate basic stuff like; gross and net internal and external floor areas. However, since 2013 the RICS has been engaged, with other like-minded organisations, on a mission to produce a new set of international property measurement standards (IPMS) to replace COMP, as it was thought to be no longer fit for purpose.
The original proposal, published in (2015), together with IPMS Offices, was to have a unique set of measurement standards for various properties classes; residential, commercial,retail, etc. and initially the RICS made the new standards mandatory. IPMS is a good deal more complex than COMP and went down with the surveying community like a lead balloon. Undeterred, the RICS and its international chums carried on and in the years from 2016 - 19 produced the promised standards for differing classes of property.
It came as a surprise therefore when last month, the IPMS: All Buildings was published in a different format to the previously published material with one set of rules now covering all property types. Goodness know how many air miles have been clocked up during this process and what the total bill must be but in the meantime, valuable assets such as the RICS Black Book have been refused RICS funding to update the content and left rotting on the shelf.
Last week the new RICS President, Ann Gray, was quoted as saying at her inauguration;
‘I begin invigorated at the prospect of what we can do’
Really?
Duncan Cartlidge FRICS
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