A graduate surveyor from leading global property consultancy CBRE has been named as a top prize winner at the RICS Scotland Student Prize awards 2016.
Graduate surveyor Amie Owen, based in the firm’s Aberdeen office, was awarded the prize for the best Building Surveying dissertation at an RICS Scotland ceremony.
Amie’s dissertation, entitled ‘An evaluation of the reasons why historic buildings continue to be damaged by fire despite the availability of guidance and technology specifically designed to prevent it’, was nominated for the prestigious prize by Edinburgh Napier University, after she received the honour for best student in her university class.
RICS Scotland runs the awards every year and involves all four Scottish Universities that run construction related courses (Heriott-Watt, Edinburgh Napier, Glasgow Caledonian and Aberdeen), submitting the best student dissertations under various categories to RICS. Prizes are awarded for the best dissertations across the disciplines of Building Surveying, Quantity Surveying and Valuation. For the first time all three prizes were awarded to students from Edinburgh Napier University.
In order to decide which dissertations to award the prizes to, the judging panel used a rigorous criteria in assessing each submission, measuring the relevance of the research to the profession, the quality of both the research and the presentation of the findings and the strength of the conclusions reached.
Amie Owen, who graduated from university with a first-class honors in Building Surveying, said: “I am thrilled to be recognised by RICS Scotland for the hard work I put into my dissertation. I am incredibly passionate about the built environment and chose the subject of my dissertation following the fire at the Glasgow School of Art. A number of experts from within the industry had suggested that this could have been avoided and from my research I discovered that fire damage in such buildings is a continuing problem despite the fact that there are lots of ways to protect them.”
The awards were presented at RICS Scotland headquarters on Princes Street, Edinburgh.
Gail Hunter, director of RICS Scotland said: “We received a great deal of high quality entries which demonstrate the versatile nature and importance of the surveying profession. The winning entries examine key issues affecting the built environment through in-depth study and research. I wish each student all the best as they continue with their career and hope that their research has motivated and demonstrated to them the diversity and benefits of a career in chartered surveying.”