Quantity Surveyor

Why this role is different

Most quantity surveyors only ever see one side of the fence. On the consultant side, you write a cost plan, hand it over, and never find out what the job actually cost. On the builder's side, you price someone else's drawings at a point where it's far too late to change anything.

Ballast Point is both a registered architectural practice and a licensed construction company. Same roof, same team. One person — you — owns the whole cost picture from development feasibility to final account. You'll set up the cost coding system that feeds actual costs from finished jobs back into the rates we use for the next feasibility, so our numbers get sharper with every project. You find out whether you were right, and the whole business gets better because of it. That feedback loop is rarer in this industry than it should be.

One thing to be clear about: this is a supporting role, not a gatekeeping one. You own the system — the rates, the coding, the tools — so the whole team can make good cost decisions. Team fit is the single most important thing to us. Supporting the team, and supporting our clients to make good decisions, is what this role is for.

We're based in the heart of Balmain, doing high-quality residential work — houses and apartments — across heritage conservation areas in the Inner West, East and North. We're a small, close-knit, family-friendly and dog-friendly office, with enough project variety that you're not pricing the same house five times a year.

The role

You'll build and run the cost system that supports the entire team, across the full life of every project:

Cost planning

• Support the team in cost planning from initial feasibility, through concept design, to Issued For Construction (IFC) documentation

• Manage contract and proposal preparation and tender requests, including identifying and valuing Provisional Sums (PS) and Prime Cost (PC) items

Procurement

• Prepare procurement schedules with letting gain/loss evaluation

• Run subcontractor Requests for Proposal (RFPs), evaluate quotes, draft and negotiate terms, and manage awards

Contract administration — upstream

• Prepare head contract payment claims

• Prepare and manage head contract variations and claims

Contract administration — downstream

• Receive subcontractor payment claims and issue payment schedules in accordance with the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW)

• Assess and respond to subcontractor variations and claims

Cost management and analysis

• Maintain our rate library and price lists, keeping them honest against actual subcontractor and supplier pricing

• Produce monthly cost/value reports for each job, rolled up into a monthly cost report for the business

• Review why budgets get blown, identify the causes, and feed what you learn back into the rates

This is a full-time, in-office role based in Balmain.

To apply, you will need

• Demonstrated quantity surveying experience on architecturally designed homes and/or apartments. This one isn't negotiable — pricing bespoke residential is a different discipline to volume housing or commercial fitout

• Experience across both pre-contract (cost planning, estimating, tendering) and post-contract (payment claims, variations, subcontract administration) work

• Working knowledge of the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act 1999 (NSW) and the mechanics of payment claims and schedules

• The ability to build a credible budget from sketch-level information, and to explain the assumptions sitting underneath it

• Fluency with estimating software, and comfort in spreadsheets well beyond the basics

• The ability to read and take off from architectural documentation (ours is produced in Archicad — we can teach the software, but you need to be able to read a set of drawings)

• Direct, clear communication. You'll be helping clients and colleagues make good decisions, which sometimes means telling them things they don't want to hear — early enough for it to be useful

Nice to have, not required

• Experience on projects in Heritage Conservation Areas, and with the Development Application (DA) and Complying Development Certificate (CDC) pathways

• Time on the tools or running sites

• An interest in building systems, not just operating them

What's on offer

• Your numbers get tested against what the building actually cost — a feedback loop most QSs never get

• Real influence at the point where cost is still controllable, instead of reporting on decisions already made

• A small, collaborative, family-friendly team where you're not just a cog in the machine

• Heart-of-Balmain office, good coffee, dogs, the occasional beer

How to apply

Send through your CV and a short cover letter, though the Seek Portal

Sample cost plans, cost reports or payment schedules are genuinely useful to us — redact names, addresses and figures if you need to. We'll ask for references later in the process, no need to include them now.