Construction Quality Management Blog

Quality control inspections are a major component of a quality management program, but paradoxically, getting people to do them properly (or at all) is one of the greatest challenges quality managers face. Senior managers may only care about the number of inspections that are completed, not how they are done. This leads to pencil-whipping by field personnel, which defeats the purpose of having a quality program in the first place. It’s also common for field personnel to resist performing inspections because they don’t want to add more processes and paperwork to their intense workloads.

Inspection and test plans (ITPs) have been used for military construction for years, but they are becoming increasingly popular for all types of construction for a number of reasons. An ITP is essentially a checklist of required inspections. It’s a plan that lists what tests and inspections should be performed throughout each phase of a project. As a major component of an overall project quality plan, it’s important to understand what an ITP is, reasons to use one, and how to get the most from it in your own projects.

When it comes to quality management programs, the spectrum ranges from no formalized systems at all to a streamlined program with integrated mechanisms for continual improvement. Most organizations fall somewhere in the middle, but there are times when it’s important to know how a company ranks. A few scenarios when you might want to assess a quality program include hiring qualified subcontractors, evaluating the progress of your program, or determining the status of your program before you implement new systems.

Much like inspection checklists and punch lists, daily reports are an important component of a good construction quality program. They are best used used for:

• Documenting construction progress
• Providing information about what happened on the jobsite each day, including:
• Weather conditions
• Subcontractors onsite
• Equipment used
• Tasks performed
• Recording observations and discussions with subcontractors and crews
• Providing forensic accounts of what happened on the jobsite every day

It’s a common misconception that the quality manager or quality assurance (QA) department is the only party responsible for quality on a construction project. However, there are numerous stakeholders that play roles in producing a quality product.

Some of our guiding principles at FTQ360 are that construction defects can be prevented and that construction punch list items can be reduced. While these two concepts are certainly linked—fewer defects means a shorter punch list—you can’t rely on punch lists alone to get you there.

It’s common for quality managers to think that the purpose of their quality program is to show proof of compliance or to fulfill a client’s QC reporting requirements. However, there is so much more your quality program can do. Leveraging the data you’re gathering and the systems you already have in place can help you prevent deficiencies and significantly improve construction quality performance.

After you deploy your construction quality program, it’s important to make sure it’s working and that people are using the systems properly. In addition to making sure all your hard work isn’t for nothing, keeping your quality program on track also helps you justify the costs, demonstrate ROI, and get closer to the ultimate goal of first-time quality. Monitoring progress also keeps field personnel engaged and ensures compliance with the quality program.

 
We talk to a lot of quality managers who have taken all the right steps to implement a construction quality program—creating a strategy, getting buy-in from all the stakeholders, and selecting the right software vendor—only to get frustrated that the program isn’t working because people aren’t using it. Another challenge we frequently hear about is that even when people are using the system, nobody is monitoring the process and taking steps to improve it. This means that although you’re using the system you put in place, quality is not improving.

If you have an inspection process in place but are still finding too many defects, it might be time to take a closer look at your inspection checklists. It’s not uncommon for checklists to lose relevance and to see benefits taper off over time. This is because unless you continue to adapt your checklists to your current issues and concerns, they won’t be an effective defect prevention tool.