The RICS "Responsible Use of AI in Surveying Practice" standard is live as of today, the 9th March 2026.

It's a serious piece of professional governance, and it applies to every chartered surveyor in the world.

Most people working in planning, project controls, and programme management are not chartered surveyors. There is no governing body for the profession. No mandatory standard. No disciplinary committee reviewing how AI tools influence a client's baseline programme or a delay analysis submitted to adjudication.

And that, if we're being honest with ourselves, is the point at which we should be paying closer attention, not less.

The absence of a regulator is not the absence of responsibility

Project controls exists to give clients certainty. We build baselines that contracts are measured against. We produce reports that boards use to make investment decisions. We prepare forensic analyses that sit in front of adjudicators. The outputs we create carry real commercial and legal weight.

If an AI-assisted delay analysis contains a structural error, a distorted critical path, a misattributed cause, a gap in logic that wasn't caught because "the tool flagged it as clean", the consequences don't become smaller because our profession lacks a registration body.

The client still suffers. The claim still fails. The contractor still doesn't get paid.

What RICS has done is codify a standard of care that professionals in adjacent fields are going to be expected to demonstrate in court, in adjudication, and in client boardrooms. Whether or not the APM, CIOB, or anyone else follows suit, our clients and their lawyers will increasingly ask the same questions RICS is now mandating.

 

What the RICS principles look like in our world

Let me look at the five areas the RICS standard addresses and translate them into the planning and controls context, because the framing matters.

 

1. Baseline knowledge

The RICS standard requires members to develop and maintain sufficient knowledge to support responsible use of AI systems including understanding their limitations, failure modes, and the risks of bias in outputs. It acknowledges that knowledge across the profession is currently uneven.

The same gap exists in planning and project controls. Knowing that a tool "handles delay analysis" is not sufficient. Practitioners need to understand how it weights float, how it responds to concurrent delay, and where its logic breaks down under a Time Impact Analysis or a retrospective as-built method. AI literacy means knowing where the tools fail, and why.

 

2. Practice management: data governance, system governance, and risk

The standard requires firms to document AI-related risks - bias, erroneous outputs, data concerns, in a formal risk register, with regular reviews and a written assessment before any AI system with material impact is deployed.

Which tools in your controls environment influence professional outputs? Have outputs been stress-tested against manual checks? What happens when they produce anomalies? Without answers, a practice is not governing its AI use, it is relying on optimism.

 

3. Procurement and due diligence

Before any AI-assisted platform contributes to a client deliverable, the standard requires firms to apply proper due diligence to the supplier: training data provenance, bias testing methodology, known failure modes, data privacy and GDPR position.

Most vendors are not prepared for these conversations. The gap in their answer tells you precisely the risk you are carrying on behalf of your client.

 

4. Client communication and terms of engagement

The RICS standard requires firms to notify clients in writing where AI will be involved in service delivery, including what parts of the process are affected, whether there is an option to opt out, and how AI-influenced outputs can be contested.

When a client commissions a forensic delay analysis or a project controls framework, they generally assume a consultant has reviewed every data point with care. If a tool is structuring the timeline, flagging the critical path, or automating the narrative, clients deserve to know before work starts, not after it is submitted. Disclosure is not a weakness. It is a mark of professional confidence.

 

5. Outputs, reliance, and accountability

The standard is explicit: professionals must apply their own skill and judgement to assess the reliability of any AI output, and they remain accountable for all work, as fully as if they had produced it without AI assistance. Oversight cannot be delegated to the system.

In planning and project controls, every programme, every report, every claim narrative that leaves a practice should carry the intellectual ownership of an accountable professional who has reviewed it, challenged it, and stood behind it. AI makes human ownership more important, not less.

 

What this means in practice for ViViAD

At ViViAD, our position is straightforward: we are evidence-led and methodology-first. That doesn't change because AI tools become available. It means AI tools get held to the same standard as everything else we produce.

Before any tool or automated process contributes to a client deliverable, a programme, a project controls report, a forensic analysis, we should be able to explain:

• What it did, and what it didn't do

• Where a qualified consultant reviewed and owned the output

• What the limitations are, and how they were mitigated

• Whether the client knows and has consented to the approach

 

The RICS standard is mandatory for surveyors. For the rest of us in project controls and planning, it's a useful mirror. We may not have a regulator. But our clients have exposure, our outputs carry consequences, and our reputation is built one defensible deliverable at a time.

For clients commissioning project controls services: you are entitled to ask. A baseline programme, a delay analysis, a controls report - these carry your project's commercial exposure. They should be produced by accountable professionals, not generated by a tool that can confidently produce the wrong answer.

 

Read the full RICS standard here: https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/standards/Responsible-use-of-artificial-intelligence-in-surveying-practice_September-2025.pdf

 

Best, Radek Makar Director | ViViAD radek@viviad.co.uk

ViViAD is an independent consultancy specialising in Planning, Project Controls, Power BI Reporting, and Construction Claims Support. We work across the UK - typically on NEC contracts in defence, nuclear, renewables, and infrastructure - embedding with project teams to bring structure, clarity, and commercial control. Interim or longer-term, we fit around what you need.