Grace Arinaitwe, was born in present day Sheema Municipality, Sheema district.
He is born to a family of six and to parents who are both teachers. The father taught in a Teachers College school in western Uganda while the mother was a primary school teacher and head teacher in the same region. He however describes his background as humble.
Education;
Arinaitwe did his primary school at Busesire Primary school & Nganwa Junior school where he finished his P7 in 2003 and joined Mbarara High school for his ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels where he finished in 2009 before joining Kyambogo University in 2010.
Arinaitwe did not settle for just a bachelor’s degree, he afterwards in 2016 joined Uganda Management Institute (UMI) and did a Postgraduate Diploma in Project Planning and Management.
And in 2017, he grabbed an opportunity when Commonwealth Shared Scholarship was floated and joined Nottingham Trent University where he studied a master’s degree in Quantity Surveying.
He explains that he had a dream of becoming a professional Civil Engineer but was short of admission marks and was offered Building Economics degree course on government scholarship at Kyambogo University. He studied this course and later after 4 years graduated as a Building Economist.
Arinaitwe said that he used to see engineers on building sites and engineers’ names with other professionals on building sites sign boards. This was major inspiration from his childhood.
Arinaitwe’s professional qualification;
Arinaitwe is a Chartered Quantity Surveyor and Registered Quantity Surveyor in Uganda and Rwanda. He has Ten years of QS experience in the construction industry.
He is the Team leader & Director at ACETEC Construction Ltd- a construction company majorly offering traditional contracting, design and build, construction management, and management contracting services to our clients.
He has managed prestigious construction projects majorly in educational, recreational, residential, commercial, hospitality, health and industrial sectors both at pre-contract and post-contract stages.
He is a Professional member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)-UK, a Member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (CIArb), and a Registered Quantity Surveyor with the Surveyors Registration Board – Uganda.
He is also a Registered Professional Quantity Surveyor with Rwanda Institute of Quantity Surveyors (RIQS) and a Professional Member of the Institution of Surveyors of Uganda (ISU).
What are Arinaitwe’s current leadership responsibilities?
He serves as at the Institution of Surveyors of Uganda as a Chairperson of Quantity Surveying Chapter (2023- 2025). He is a patron of Association of Student Surveyors Kyambogo. He previously served as secretary for Quantity Surveying Chapter, and Member of the Social Affairs and Events Committee (2021-2023).
The Institution of Surveyors of Uganda (ISU) and its roles;
The Institution of Surveyors of Uganda is a professional body that brings together Surveyors in Uganda. Its membership includes; Quantity surveyors, Valuation surveyors, Land surveyors, Mining and Hydrological surveyors.
He states the main objective of ISU is to promote professional surveying practices that can enhance the quality of services under the various surveying disciplines in Uganda by; promoting advancement and sharing of surveying knowledge, promote general interest of the profession and the institution, determine matters of professional practice and conduct, nominate representatives of the profession to boards and committees on which representation is statutory requirement among other things.
What has his work life been like?
It has been an exciting journey filled with a lot of learning, unlearning and relearning.
“I dreamt of becoming a civil engineer but later became a Professional Quantity Surveyor. I have fallen in love with the Quantity Surveying profession and It has been good and rewarding” he stated.
We are paid more or less as Civil engineers, though our profession is not so pronounced as engineers but we are making efforts to market our profession in Uganda” Arinaitwe added.
Who is a quantity surveyor and what is their role in construction?
Arinaitwe explains a Quantity surveyor is a professional with specialised training and experience in cost and contract management in the construction industry. Quantity surveyors are also referred to as Building economists, construction cost consultants, cost managers, cost engineers, construction accountants etc.
“Quantity surveyors are involved at all stages of a project, that is from inception to decommissioning stages. They work on building, civil engineering (roads, airports, railway, dams, tunnels etc), petrochemical, oil and gas, agricultural, electrical and mechanical installation projects. Broadly, the role of a Quantity Surveyor is to manage construction cost at all stages of a project and manage contracts” he said.
Arinaitwe explains that businessmen and companies are bound to make loses, projects experiencing low value for money if services of Quantity Surveyors are not sought.
He explains that clients and businessmen take shortcuts by not consulting professionals, they instead hire masqueraders who lack training and proven experience in cost and contract management.
Current career plan;
Arinaitwe is working hard to become a Chartered arbitrator. In this he would be joining other senior professionals who handle local and international construction disputes and in this they work towards resolving disputes so that they are not taken to court for redress.
His message to the public;
“I appeal to the government to enact a law that speaks to modern realities of our profession and establishes structures for Quantity Surveyors in local governments and government agencies. There are other categories of Surveyors but here I am talking about Quantity Surveyors” Arinaitwe said.
I appeal to parents to enroll their children to do Quantity Surveying courses. “The students only need to pass well Mathematics, Economics or Physics. They could have done Art, Technical drawing and entrepreneurship as additional subjects in ‘A level’’ he added.
He also said the Quantity Surveying degree course is only taught from Makerere and Kyambogo Universities (Uganda) and there is an estimated 100 registered Quantity Surveyors in Uganda which means more Quantity Surveyors are needed to serve close to 45 million people.
“In summary, Quantity Surveyors’ work and demand for their services are growing at a faster rate in Uganda hence need to train more Quantity Surveyors and the public must be told that we are critical players in construction professional team” Arinaitwe added.
ARINAITWE GRACE (RSU, MRICS, MCIArb, M.I.S.U)
Mobile contact; 0752713557
