BSc (Hons) Building Surveying
- Entry year:
- 2025/26
- Start date:
- September
- Study mode:
- Full-time
- Course duration:
- 3 years FullTime, 4 years Placement year
- Campus:
- City
Why study this course with LJMU?
- LJMU ranked 16th in the UK for construction, surveying and planning courses (The Guardian University Guide 2025)
- LJMU ranked 8th university in the UK for building degrees (The Times UK University Rankings 2025)
- Fully accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE)
- Opportunity to undertake a year's industrial placement or study abroad
- Opportunity to participate in an exciting international experience studying a building surveying subject abroad
- 6 million investment in developing state-of-the-art teaching facilities
- Stepping stone to a varied career with UK and overseas employment opportunities
About your course
Completing the BSc (Hons) Building Surveying at Liverpool John Moores University will enable you to graduate as a fully accredited professional with relevant industry experience and excellent earning potential.
Traditionally, a building surveyors main area of expertise has been in property refurbishment and conservation, but nowadays they are also involved in building design, management, maintenance, and surveys the whole lifecycle of a building, in fact.
As such, they work with a range of people, from building owners and occupiers to builders, planners, lawyers and service engineers, so not only do they need to be technically competent but practical as well, and capable of giving advice on subjects as diverse as repair diagnosis to building design to legal representation in court.
The course is built around the following four themes together with work experience and project tasks that simulate real working practices, giving you the knowledge and practical skills to launch your career as a building surveyor:
- Technical knowledge, such as building construction, building defects, science and materials
- Design practice, which covers cad, refurbishment projects, sustainability projects, building conservation
- Management practice, including construction site management, facilities and maintenance management business management
- Law, including construction law, property law, health and safety law
The course also offers a sandwich route which involves a paid placement where you can apply what you have learnt at LJMU out in the workplace. Such experience will enhance both your professional skills development and your CV, boosting your employment prospects after graduation.
Students not undertaking a placement year are registered on the non-Sandwich version of the programme and will have the opportunity of an additional study year abroad following Level 5, providing students with an additional year of study at an approved overseas partner that will complement their programme at LJMU.
Additional course costs
There are no travel costs for day site visits. Optional residential study visits in the UK and abroad will have costs involved. Locations of such visits may be subject to change.
Course modules
What you will study on this degree
Further guidance on modules
Modules are designated core or optional in accordance with professional body requirements, as applicable, and LJMU’s Academic Framework Regulations. Whilst you are required to study core modules, optional modules provide you with an element of choice. Their availability may vary and will be subject to meeting minimum student numbers.
Where changes to modules are necessary these will be communicated as appropriate.
Core modules
Core modules
Optional modules
Core modules
Professional accreditation
This degree has a very high standing both professionally and academically. It is fully accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE).
If you complete relevant work experience within two years of obtaining your degree, you will qualify for the professional qualification of Member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS).
Furthermore, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) placed it amongst the top 15% of building surveying courses in the country.
Your Learning Experience
Excellent facilities and learning resources
We adopt an active blended learning approach, meaning you will experience a combination of face-to-face and online learning during your time at LJMU. This enables you to experience a rich and diverse learning experience and engage fully with your studies. Our approach ensures that you can easily access support from your personal tutor, either by meeting them on-campus or via a video call to suit your needs.
You can expect to spend on average 14-16 hours in the classroom which may be in the form of lectures, tutorials and workshops, combined with your own research using our library and the web. You should spend around 35 hours per week in private study.
Work-related Learning
The best way to experience working in the building surveying industry is to undertake a year's professional work placement, either in the UK or overseas, so you can put into practice what you have learnt in your first two years at LJMU. Taking the sandwich option will greatly improve your career prospects and could even lead to a permanent position with your placement employer.
The placement is fully paid and is an invaluable opportunity to learn new skills and gain hands-on experience that will add real value to your CV and impress future employers. The direct work experience could also count towards a professional qualification. It can even count towards the professional MRICS qualification.
Dedicated personal tutor, plus study skills support
Throughout the course you will have the support of a personal tutor who can provide one-to-one guidance and advice on course-related issues.
If you decide to take up a third year work placement, there is plenty of support available from the Faculty placement team, both in finding and securing the placement, and during the year when one of your tutors will visit you in your workplace to check on your progress.
Assessment varies depending on the modules you choose, but will usually include a combination of exams and coursework.
All students perform differently depending on the type of assessment they are asked to do, and so a variety of assessment methods are used. These include exams (open and closed book), coursework (projects, technical reports, reviews, etc), and presentations (individual and group).
Your tutors will give prompt and constructive feedback via Canvas (our virtual learning environment), face-to-face or in writing.
This will help you to identify your strengths as well as the areas where you may need to put in more work.
Where you will study
What you can expect from your School
This programme is delivered in the Byrom Street complex of LJMUs City Campus. Here you'll find high quality lecture theatres, meeting and seminar rooms plus social spaces and a large café. The Avril Robarts Library is just minutes away on Tithebarn Street.
Course tutors
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Lecturer/Senior Lecturer -
Lecturer/ Senior Lecturer -
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Lecturer/Senior Lecturer
Not only have I established a firm understanding of building surveying, but have also gained an invaluable amount of commercial awareness. This has undoubtedly come from the lecturers delivering the course and their ability to draw upon personal industry experience and deliver that to the students. I would recommend this course to any individual with even just a slight interest in surveying, as once you join the course you realise how broad of a discipline it really is and the vast amount of skills you will ascertain.
Career paths
Do you want a varied professional career with many challenges and good employment prospects? If so then becoming a Chartered Building Surveyor may be the career for you.
Do you want a varied professional career with many challenges and good employment prospects? If so then becoming a Chartered Building Surveyor may be the career for you.
The most likely route to go down once you graduate is to become a building surveyor in commercial building management or housing and social building provision. Some of our graduates go on to run their own practices or become partners in established building surveying practices once they become professionally qualified.
Building Surveying is a varied profession operating in both the public and private sectors covering both residential and commercial clients. Chartered Building Surveyors offer expert advice on all aspects of land, property and construction for both private and public companies, including:
- inspecting and surveying existing buildings, proposing and managing refurbishment projects, appraising buildings for new uses, conserving listed buildings
- providing advice on building defects and failures, diagnosis of defects and specification of remedial work
- property legislation advice – party wall issues, building
- regulations and planning permission issues
- project management services, working with clients, preparing outline designs and specifications, refurbishment work carrying out building surveys and measured survey
Student Futures - Careers, Employability and Enterprise Service
A wide range of opportunities and support is available to you, within and beyond your course, to ensure our students experience a transformation in their career trajectory. Every undergraduate curriculum includes Future Focus during Level 4, an e-learning resource and workshop designed to help you to develop your talents, passion and purpose.
Every student has access to Careers Zone 24/7, LJMU's suite of online Apps, resources and jobs board via the LJMU Student Futures website.
Tuition fees and funding
- Home full-time per year:
- £9,535
- Placement year:
- £1,905
Fees
The fees quoted above cover registration, tuition, supervision, assessment and examinations as well as library membership and student IT support with access to printed, multimedia and digital resources including programme-appropriate software and on campus Wi-Fi.
Financial Support
The University offers a range of scholarships to support students through their studies. You'll find all the information you need on our specialist funding pages, including details of the Student Support Fund and other activities to support with the cost of living.
Additional Costs
In addition to fees, students should also keep in mind the cost of:
- Accommodation
- Travel costs including those for placements, visas and travel for studying abroad and field trips unless paid for by LJMU
- Stationery, IT equipment, professional body membership and graduation gown hire
The University reserves the right to increase tuition fees in accordance with any changes to the maximum allowable fees set by the UK Parliament. In the event of such a change, any fee increase will be subject to a maximum cap of 10% of the total course cost as originally stated at the time of your offer.
Entry requirements
Please choose your qualifications below to view requirements
Grades/points required from qualifications: BBC-ABB (112-128)
Work out how many UCAS points your qualifications are worth by visiting the UCAS Tariff Calculator.
Qualification requirements
How to apply
Securing your place at LJMU
UCAS is the official application route for our full-time undergraduate courses. Further information on the UCAS application process can be found here https://www.ljmu.ac.uk/study/undergraduate-students/how-to-apply.
We are looking for students who are keen to learn new skills and develop those they already possess. We want students with the ability to: be creative with ideas and concepts, moderate their creativity with logic, be enthusiastic and thirsty for knowledge, communicate effectively and confidently and understand and adapt to a wide range of issues connected with the subject.
It is also important that students are able to manage time and tasks effectively as an individual and as part of a team, use appropriate sources to find and organise information and select and critically evaluate information in order to analyse problems.
If you would like to develop these skills further, have a strong interest in this subject area and want to work effectively within it, then this is the course for you. International applications will be considered in line with UK qualifications.
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