Company Announcement - Quantity Surveying students and staff at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth received most of the honour and accolades presented at the 8th Annual SA Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession's Research Conference, "Cementing the Future",  held in Bloemfontein recently .

Leonard Wright, a BTech QS graduate at NMMU, was awarded the Association of SA Quantity Surveyors prestigious 2014 Gold Medal Award at the gala dinner that formed part of the conference. ASAQS president, Bert van den Heever, presented the award to Wright for obtaining the highest marks in South Africa in the BTech QS programme. The Gold Medal is awarded annually to worthy final academic year QS students whose "academic achievements are of outstanding merit and whose personal qualities promise to positively contribute to the profession". Wright was one of two Gold Medal Award recipients. Bjorn Anderson, a University of Pretoria BSc (Hons) QS graduate, won the other 2014 accolade.

However, staff members and BTech QS Honours students of the NMMU Department of Quantity Surveying generally dominated the 2014 awards at the conference, notably Port Elizabeth student, Sinenhlanhla Ntuli, who received no fewer than four awards for her presentation entitled “Quantity Surveyors’ Ethical Behaviour” (co-authored by Prof Gerrit Crafford, Associate Professor in the NMMU Department of Quantity Surveying). She received:

• The Aecom Best Presentation and Innovation Paper award;
• The ASAQS Best Overall First-time Presenter award;
• The LimCo Best Youth Woman Presentation Paper award; and
• The Leon Cronjé Best Overall Youth Presentation Paper award for under 35-year-old students.

Furthermore, NMMU QS student, Joshua Young, his lecturer Sharon Dent, and Prof Crafford  received The Quantum Best Transformation and Sustainability Paper award for their paper, “The Role of the Quantity Surveyor in the Green Building Process”.
Sharon Dent and Prof Gerrit Crafford also received the Pentad Best Academic Paper award for their paper, “Predicting Quantity Surveying Students’ Performance”.