An important prerequisite to achieving a sustained competitive advantage in
construction is a robust quality culture that fosters the continuous delivery
of value (quality) to the customer through the project delivery process. This
garners customer appreciation, satisfaction, and loyalty, which translates into
revenue, opportunity, and growth.
Unfortunately, many construction organizations do not have a robust quality
assurance and control process with which to ensure sustained stellar outcomes.
Some companies have a quality process, but it is marginally effective. Many
smaller companies depend on the project specifications to define quality and
the oversight of their field personnel to achieve the necessary quality
outcome. These efforts have marginal positive results that, to their detriment,
lead to significant variation in the quality outcomes from their project
delivery process.
The importance of quality may be perceived differently by the three main
parties involved in the project delivery process: the owner team, the design
team, and the constructor team. Each may have a different perspective on how to
define quality and its relative importance. Quality can also be looked at from
different usage or function, such as the quality of production, the quality of
the product, and the quality of the process to name a few.
The quality of production focuses on the means and methods employed by the
contractor to perform the work in a way that it enables the accomplishment of
the project objectives. The quality of the product relies on achieving the
contact promises, and the best way to do that is to do the work efficiently and
correctly the first time. The aim of the quality management process is to
define value, measure value, and deliver value.
For the owner to receive a quality product, the contractor has to deliver
it. This highlights another aspect of quality that relates to its definition.
What constitutes quality, how is it defined, is it clear and readily
understood, or is it measurable? The project documents (generally the
specifications) defines quality and establishes the expected level for it. The
contractor must clearly understand that as well as manage expectations
associated with quality. To achieve this, the contractor must have a written
and robust quality management process. (See "A
Discourse on Construction Quality.")
Quality Issues and Concerns
The quality aspect of the project is identified and elaborated in the
specifications. To manage the various perspectives and functions of quality,
another element needs to be addressed, and that is the quality management
function. The challenge here is how exactly the quality of the project is
defined and determined? There really are few objective measures that indicate
if the specified level of quality is achieved. Some of these are verified
through testing by a third-party agency employed by the owner to conduct tests
during construction to verify that the work is, in fact, in compliance with the
project specification. Such things as soil compaction, concrete slump test,
concrete strength break tests, welding of the structural steel frame members,
the curtain wall assembly being tested for leakage, possibly the levelness and
flatness of the concrete slabs may be tested, etc. The rest of the quality
evaluation is determined by visual assessments or anecdotal information.
This is why the contractor must review the specifications to determine if
the specified quality requirements are clearly understandable or vague. For
those that are not clear, the contractor must establish with the designer as
well as the owner some acceptable means that will be used to evaluate the work.
These become the quality control standard to which the resulting quality of any
part of the project is evaluated.
The contractor achieves the defined quality by effectively managing the work
process. To do this consistently and effectively, the contractor must have a
comprehensive written quality assurance program. Many contractors don't,
and the level of quality becomes the responsibility of the various project
staff. This results in a wide range of outcomes resulting from the expertise,
commitment, diligence, and effectiveness of the staff.
Ensuring the achievement of the quality requirements of the project should
be a key concern of the person in charge of the project, and it is his or her
responsibility to ensure that the project staff diligently follow up with their
crew and/or subcontractor's field management to ensure that the project
quality expectations are achieved. Any work that is below par will have to be
corrected, it could end up on the punch list, or problems may surface during
the warranty period. This is detrimental to the smooth project turnover and
impedes rapid project closeout, as well as possibly impacting
relationships.
More importantly, defective work may lead to callbacks during the warranty
period or even beyond. This has negative results for the contractor in terms of
work that generates no income and involves staff in nonrevenue-generating work.
It may cause difficulties for the owner in terms of disruption to operations or
losses in revenue leading to potential bad feeling or claims, impacting the
contractor's reputation as well as future business opportunities.
Much of the quality requirements are established during design over which
the contractor generally has little or no input. Before starting work, an
astute contractor will comb through the specifications and make sure that the
quality standards are clearly defined and objective in nature. Project quality
standards should be measurable in some fashion so that their achievement is
easily verifiable. In many cases, changes are made during the construction
process due to owner requests or required to amend the design. This should be
evaluated by the contractor to divine if there may be an impact on the quality
of the finished project. This should be brought to the attention of the
designer as well as the owner.
The architect, consulting engineers, or a third party usually establishes
the quality standards for the project based on their interpretation of the
project owner's needs and wants. These are generally found in the project
specifications, which usually reference standards such as the American Society
for Testing and Materials, American National Standards Institute, American
Institute of Steel Construction, American Concrete Institute, or other
organizations that spell out quality and workmanship standards. The ISO 9000
series is a quality standard promulgated by the International Organization for
Standardization. Construction specifications normally consist of a series of
instructions or prohibitions for specific operations.
In construction, one of the primary reasons for failing to track the level
of quality is due to the fact that in many instances it is subjective to some
degree. What one person deems as acceptable, another may consider as deficient.
Another difficulty in measuring quality is the approach that is based on
perceived indicators of quality, such as the extent (size) of the punch list,
number of instances faulty work is identified for a particular crew or
subcontractor during a set period of time, or the number of callbacks for a
particular subcontractor or project. Though this may be an indicator of
deficiencies in the quality of the work, it is far from an accurate indicator
of what constitutes an acceptable level of quality, nor does it establish a
standard that can be used to compare project to project, crew to crew, or
contractor to contractor.
The quality of the constructed facility may be measured in different ways.
One way is to assess it in the construction delivery process. Some of those
attributes could be conformance to specifications, aesthetics of installation,
serviceability of the final product, etc. These could be useful if the
contactor's workmanship was the focus. But in reality, it is the owner or
users of the facility who ultimately determine and/or define the quality of the
work product, usually based on life-cycle performance and/or cost. The
attributes important to them may include such elements as the effects of
superior design, materials used, installation workmanship, the durability of
the material, etc. This measurement of quality is more holistic and emphasizes
the resulting effects of quality on the operation and maintenance costs of the
facility as opposed to being focused on the construction operations.
To achieve what the user deems as "good" quality, the designer
must select the right products and set the right quality standards. The
contractor must ensure that proper workmanship is employed to achieve what the
user expects. Assuming that the designer(s) do their part, the contractor needs
to actively manage the project owner's expectations. The
contractor must also ensure that their quality assurance process is effective,
robustly implemented, and managed. This includes preconstruction activities as
well as construction activities. If these preventive measures are diligently
implemented and controlled, then the resulting work should easily achieve the
quality level specified and expected.
Preconstruction Quality Assurance Activities
To achieve the required quality of the project, the contractor has to
actively plan for it. This involves a number of steps before the project
starts. As a first step, the contractor must review the specifications to
determine if the referenced quality standards are clearly understandable,
measurable, and achievable. If there are any ambiguities or questions, the
contractor must discuss this with both the designer as well as the owner to
arrive at an understanding of what is expected. To avoid any possibilities for
confusion or disagreement later on, the parties must agree on physical samples
or mock-ups to serve as references to which comparison can and should be made.
This preconstruction effort will pay dividends later on as it will possibly
eliminate many disagreements and, more importantly, manage expectations that
could lead to better relationships and outcomes.
Before the start of the project, the person in charge of the field operation
must review the quality requirements for the project. If it is determined that
the project does, in fact, have unique quality issues or requirements, then a
project-specific quality assurance program modeled after the company program
should be written to ensure the project needs are going to be addressed. This
should then be reviewed with the project director or other senior management
and approved for implementation on the project.
Other steps that the contractor must take is to ensure everyone assigned to
the project as staff is familiar with the quality assurance program, or the
site-specific program if there is one. The contractor also must ensure that
everyone on the staff is clear as to their responsibility where quality is
concerned. Anyone new to the company should be provided with training on the
quality assurance program and what activities they are responsible for. All
subcontractor field staff should also receive an introductory training session
on the project quality assurance program and all relevant reporting required to
ensure compliance with the program.
Quality Assurance during Construction
The measurement of quality assurance activities indicates the level of
compliance with the program. The persons engaged in this determination should
compare the quality of the work (quality assurance) to the standards set by the
specifications (quality control). This is going to be effective if the
contractor has reviewed the specifications and worked with the designer and
owner to clarify any ambiguous standards in the specifications. The steps
required in the quality assurance program to ensure that the project quality
will be assured include regular inspection of the work as it is put in place.
This should be the responsibility of the project superintendent but may be
delegated to assistants and/or foremen. But, ultimately, the superintendent is
held accountable to management for the resulting outcome.
To ensure that this function is routinely carried out, there needs to be
some form of written reporting. The timing and/or frequency of these reports
should be reflective of the project size, complexity, and judgment of the
company's senior management. These reports or a summary of them must be
submitted to the project director on a regular basis. This is so that the main
office has oversight of the quality assurance activities. Senior management
must also have some form of oversight of this process, which may be handled by
a report by the project director to senior management on a monthly basis or
other accepted practice.
If the construction firm is large enough to have a company quality manager,
then this department should be involved in all of the preconstruction quality
assurance activities as well as overseeing the activities during construction.
The quality manager should receive and review all field reporting activities as
well as conduct field inspections to verify that the quality assurance process
is proceeding as planned.
Conclusion
As competition in the construction industry increases and design and
construction requirements grow increasingly complex, implementing a robust
quality assurance program that ensures delivering quality is important in
dealing with the challenges faced by contractors. By using a measured approach
to assess the quality of both the design and construction, the building
industry and contractors, in particular, will ultimately garner a business
advantage by providing a more efficient project delivery process capable of
providing superior quality in their completed project.