Modus: The Official Magazine of RICS and the Surveying Profession
Modus is the official magazine of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, known universally as RICS, the London-based professional body for people working in land, property, construction and the wider built and natural environments. Based in London, England, and published for a membership that works in nearly 150 countries, Modus occupies a particular place in British trade publishing: it is at once a membership magazine, a showcase for a profession, and a general-interest title about the places where people live and work. Its official website home is within rics.org, where Modus articles sit alongside RICS journals, standards and member services.
The magazine's name is itself a clue to its identity. RICS takes its motto, Est modus in rebus — there is measure in all things — from classical Latin, and Modus was the title chosen when that idea was turned into a magazine brand. The word captures both measurement, the historic craft at the heart of surveying, and moderation and proportion, qualities the institution presents as central to professional practice. In its modern form Modus brings together news and views, expert advice and long in-depth features spanning the breadth of the surveying profession around the world, rather than concentrating only on technical guidance for a single specialism.
Overview
Modus is a trade and membership magazine in the truest sense: its primary readers are RICS members, from newly qualified surveyors to fellows with decades of experience, and its secondary audience is the wider built-environment world of developers, planners, architects, housing specialists, valuers, building surveyors, quantity surveyors, rural practitioners and commercial property professionals. It is published in English from the United Kingdom for an international scope, and media listings have long described it as a monthly or near-monthly title, published ten times a year in its established print form.
What distinguishes Modus from a conventional trade journal is its editorial ambition. The publishing brief agreed when the title was relaunched in 2010 called for thought-leadership content and practical advice that would stimulate and shape debate in the sector, with big-name writers and provocative viewpoints, and a design that would look like nothing else in its sector. That ambition survived later changes of format. RICS itself describes the revived print edition, Modus by RICS, as an opportunity for professional contemplation, development and inspiration away from the distractions and demands of a screen — a deliberate positioning of print as reflective reading rather than breaking news.
History and Founding
The institution behind the magazine is much older than the title. RICS was founded in London as the Institution of Surveyors after a meeting of 49 surveyors at the Westminster Palace Hotel on 15 June 1868, with John Clutton as its inaugural president. It received a Royal Charter in 1881 as The Surveyors' Institution, became the Chartered Surveyors' Institution in 1930, and was granted the title Royal in 1946, becoming the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors in 1947. Its headquarters have long stood at 12 Great George Street, by Parliament Square in London, the city listed for Modus in publishing directories.
The magazine lineage is shorter and more changeable. Members were served for years by a title called RICS Business, which was rebranded as Modus, with the first issue of the new name appearing around 2010. In August 2010, InPublishing reported that the London agency Sunday had won a competitive pitch to publish the international membership magazine for RICS, relaunched as Modus and published ten times a year, with Sunday providing a full publishing service. An Asia edition followed the same path: RICS relaunched its Asia membership magazine under the Modus name, presenting it as building on RICS Business Asia. ResponseSource later recorded an editor appointment for Modus and noted the title in its database as closed in July 2020, reflecting the end of that print era before the title's later revival in a new form.
Publisher and Ownership
Modus belongs to RICS itself. It is the institution's official magazine, not an independent commercial launch, and its fortunes therefore follow the institution's membership strategy rather than newsstand sales. For the 2010 relaunch, publishing was contracted to Sunday, a London content agency whose managing director at the time described the win as a blue-chip addition to a portfolio that included major consumer and corporate clients. Sunday provided the full publishing service for the relaunched magazine, while editorial purpose and the membership relationship remained with RICS, whose head of member communications framed the magazine as a vital communication channel for members.
That ownership model explains several features of the title. Distribution was to members as part of their professional lives, advertisers bought access to a defined professional audience rather than a casual readership, and the magazine's content was expected to support and enhance RICS' reputation as the pre-eminent professional body for surveying. When RICS later consulted members on the future of Modus and its journals, and when it overhauled its communications to move away from mass emails toward targeted content, Modus was treated as part of that wider member-services ecosystem, alongside journals, the library and podcasts.
Editorial Content and Sections
Online, Modus organises its features under broad themes that map closely onto members' working lives. RICS' own round-ups of the year's most-read and most-shared Modus stories group them into categories such as built environment, construction, natural environment, technology and data, and business and skills. Individual features move freely across those themes: an examination of whether filling empty homes could help solve a housing crisis; a look at abandoned rural homes in Japan; an explanation of how a football club upgraded its stadium in three months after promotion; reporting on retrofitting the UK's housing stock for net zero; and pieces on protecting homes from flooding and extreme weather.
The tone is explanatory and outward-looking. Features use RICS members as expert voices — valuers in different countries explaining construction cost pressures, surveyors discussing how retail property valuation changed during the pandemic — and place their experience inside larger stories about housing, climate, cities and technology. In the January 2025 print issue, for example, a long feature drawn from the magazine examined place-based investment in homes and assets alongside an interviewee's career across the pub industry, illustrating how Modus mixes professional profiles with policy and market analysis. Regular online strands highlighting the most-read stories of a year show an editorial calendar driven by members' real concerns: housing supply, building safety, sustainability standards, commercial property values and new working practices.
Audience and Circulation
In its established print decade, Modus claimed one of the largest circulations in its field. Advertising material from the early 2010s described it as the official magazine of RICS with a monthly circulation of 90,122, published ten times a year, and as the most respected and well-read title within the surveying and property sector. Reader research cited in the same material found that 70 per cent of readers agreed the magazine gave them information they did not get elsewhere, and that 61 per cent had taken positive action after reading it, such as responding to an advert or contacting an organisation or individual featured.
Those figures belong to a specific period and should be read as publisher-reported claims from that era, not as a current audit. The underlying audience, however, has remained consistent in character: qualified and trainee professionals accredited by RICS, working in nearly 150 countries according to the institution's 150th anniversary material in 2018, when it counted 133,600 qualified and trainee professionals worldwide. In the United Kingdom, where the revived print edition is distributed, readers are members who opted in to receive it — RICS' 2024 annual review stressed that members had asked for the return of Modus and Journals in print and that the new opt-in magazine was well received.
Print and Digital Editions
For most of the 2010s Modus was a print-led monthly-style magazine with bespoke international editions. Its art direction during that period was widely noted in design circles: the team behind its relaunch and redesigns described creating bespoke editions for the USA, Brazil and Asia, commissioning leading photographers and illustrators for global shoots, and seeing covers regularly featured on design sites. An illustrator commissioned for what was described as the last ever printed issue — a Building Biodiversity edition — marks the point at which the old print run ended, consistent with database records showing the title closing in July 2020.
Digital publication continued through rics.org, where Modus features were published, shared and ranked in annual most-read lists for 2021, 2022 and 2024. Then, in 2024, print returned. RICS reported that it had brought back a print magazine because members said they missed it. The new title, Modus by RICS, brings together the best of Modus and the institution's Journals, is available in print in the UK on an opt-in basis, and continued into 2025, with a January 2025 issue published as a full PDF through RICS channels. The official magazine presence linked from the batch listing is the RICS news and insights section for Modus and journals, reflecting that merged identity.
Notable Editors and Contributors
Because Modus is an institution magazine produced with agency support, its public editorial history is recorded in appointments and design credits as much as in famous bylines. ResponseSource recorded the appointment of Oliver Parsons as editor of Modus, noting that he had edited magazines at Sunday Publishing, the agency behind the relaunch. On the design side, art director Christie Ferdinando is credited with art directing the relaunch and ongoing design of the magazine, including two redesigns, and quoted RICS' director of global communication praising the magazine's sharp, innovative art direction and reader engagement.
Contributors have typically been a mixture of staff writers and member experts. Features are bylined by writers such as Kay Pitman in the January 2025 issue, while the substance often comes from named practitioners — surveyors, valuers and specialists whose professional designations, MRICS and FRICS, signal their standing. The 2010 relaunch brief explicitly promised big-name writers with provocative viewpoints, and the magazine's later features, from queer venues in decline to buying property in the metaverse, show an editorial willingness to commission well beyond routine professional notices.
Awards and Recognition
Modus is described by its own design team as an award-winning magazine, and its covers and art direction attracted attention outside the surveying press, featuring on the Coverjunkie website and the Creative Review blog during its print decade. That recognition matters in context: a membership magazine competes for attention with every other publication arriving in a professional's inbox or post tray, and RICS used design quality as part of the product. The institution itself underlines the magazine's role differently, in its annual reporting, where the return of Modus by RICS in print is listed among member-service improvements delivered in response to member demand.
Professional recognition also flows the other way. Modus regularly reports the achievements of surveyors and built-environment projects, and its most-shared lists show readers using the magazine to celebrate colleagues' work — from stadium redevelopment delivered against a three-month deadline to surveying in Antarctica. For a directory profile, the safest summary is that Modus' reputation rests on a combination of design recognition, high claimed engagement in publisher research of the early 2010s, and the endorsement implicit in members asking for its print return.
Recent Developments
The most significant recent development is the 2024 print revival itself. RICS' strategy update, Shaping the Future, presented the return of print as part of a broader value programme: more funds and powers channelled to regional boards and professional group panels, more targeted communications instead of mass emails, investment in the London headquarters member space, and a growing calendar of events that had welcomed over 30,000 attendees in the previous year. Within that programme, Modus by RICS was positioned as the contemplative print companion to faster digital channels.
Editorially, recent Modus content has concentrated on the themes reshaping members' work: the housing crisis and empty homes, whole-life carbon assessment and retrofit, building safety in the wake of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry's second phase report, green premiums for sustainable commercial buildings, and the data and technology changing valuation and construction. RICS adopted its whole-life carbon standard widely and reported rising member satisfaction in 2024, and Modus serves as the narrative outlet for that agenda — explaining standards through places and people rather than publishing the standards themselves. For readers today, Modus is therefore best understood as a revived, UK-print and global-digital magazine of record for chartered surveyors: rooted in an institution founded in 1868, branded in 2010, paused in print in 2020, and returned by member demand in 2024.
