Construction Quality Management Blog

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.

If you’re looking for quality management software for your construction business, it’s important to understand the differences between the available options. For example, most software is designed to address only the quality-control component of quality management. Although this is an essential part of a quality management system, the software you choose should also allow you to address the other elements of quality management—quality planning, quality improvement, and quality assurance.

Having an underperforming subcontractor on the team can drag a project down, causing unnecessary delays, increasing costs, and affecting morale. It’s up to the super to recognize when a subcontractor is out of control and then to take steps to fix the problem. Some of the signs of poor subcontractor performance include: