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RICS representatives in the UAE are campaigning to improve the quality of skills in the region after discovering that local surveyors with chartered status were "not good enough to be practicing under the RICS banner".

The campaign, well underway in Dubai, is also planned for Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.

The group is aiming to stamp out the Middle Eastern practice of attaining the APC through a purely written examination - due to the absence of local APC assessors - and in doing so, raise the status of chartered surveyors. It has so far achieved this in Dubai.

Martin Seward-Case, APC coordinator, RICS UAE, said the drive began three years ago when he looked into candidates in Dubai who were attaining the APC through written exams rather than a face-to-face interview. "The quality of the candidates who came through the written route was frankly not good enough. They were pulling the brand down."

He added that major clients in Dubai, including Emaar and Dubai Municipality, had started conducting their own interviews with QSs as "they had learned not to trust the badge of the RICS".

Under the initiative the group has trained two Dubai-based members as APC assessors: Seward-Case himself and Charles Blinco, treasurer and vice chair, RICS UAE.

"It will take two or three years for (local clients) to accept they are able to trust us," said Seward-Case.

Local surveyors were not good enough to be practicing under the RICS banner

Martin Seward-Case, RICS

Dubai will now be used as a "staging post" for rolling out higher training standards further afield.

The Dubai group is also petitioning the RICS' head office in the UK to formally recognise some QS courses offered by Indian universities.

The majority of QSs qualifying via the written route in the Middle East are from Sri Lanka and India, according to Seward-Case. While there is one Sri Lankan institution - Moratuwa University - that the RICS recognises, there are none in India.

He said: "Sri Lankans can go through the ‘experience' route to the APC quite easily but it's hard for Indians to become chartered. Because their universities are not recognised, they have to spend two years collecting top up credits to add to their basic degree or diploma from India before they can take the APC here. Then it takes them another two years to do the APC."

To deal with any chartered surveyors feared to be sub-standard, the RICS group, which is led by Daniel Alcon, chair of RICS Middle East, is looking at conducting spot checks on those who qualified through the written route in one to two years' time.

The group is also asking the RICS HQ for its own office and more funding. "We feel we have proved ourselves now," said Seward-Case.