Enhancing Financial Communication in Quantity Surveying Practice

The construction industry is becoming increasingly complex, including the aspects that deal with communication. Subsequently, financial reports generated during the project delivery process are also becoming more complex and thus harder to comprehend. The purpose of this study to explore financial communication in quantity surveying practice, with a view to understanding their role, the financial communication emanating from them, guidelines for successful financial communication, and determining a reliable quality test for such financial communication. A systematic literature review was done on financial communication, readability tests for financial communication and financial communication in quantity surveying practice. The main limitation of the study is that it is based on a preliminary literature review. However results indicate certain requirements for accurate readability tests on financial communication including Plain English guidelines and the Gunning Fog Index test for textual components, while also taking standard construction terms into account, where there could be more than three syllables. The readability and legibility model has four main categories for optimisation of a document, each of which has elements that need perfecting in order to create transparent, efficient and effective financial communication. The implication of this research is that in the face of noted problems with financial communication from Quantity Surveyors, there is need to explore the quality of such information, and to determine the existence, if any, and the use of relevant quality assurance systems in their communication.