How to Create Quality Control Checklist Templates

One of the most important parts of setting up a construction quality management system is to create Quality Control Checklists that cover all your inspections.

While this might seem like a daunting task, if you are familiar with common problems in the construction business, you can quickly set up quality checklists based on your experience and stakeholder concerns.

Once you set up your initial checklists, you can easily refine them by adding additional items as they come up.

How to prepare a Quality Checklist Template

Let's start at the beginning. An inspection checklist is a document that records the details of a condition, process, or event. It is a list of things to inspect, or a list of the criteria by which a condition, process, or event may be judged against a set of standards.

In this article we will outline how to prepare your quality inspection checklists.

• Start with inspection checklist templates
• Customize checklists for your project and scope of work
• Prepare project-specific checklists "just-in-time"
• Keep checklists short and focused
• Organize checklists the way you will inspect
• Refine your checklists continuously

Start With Quality Control checklist template

Begin with checklist templates that have commonly found construction issues. It is easier to modify an existing QC checklist than to start from scratch. And reviewing these templates and inspection reports might even remind you of checkpoints you might have forgotten otherwise.

Customize checklists for your project and scope of work

Add check points based on problems you frequently encounter or modify check points based on your own experience and the reports from your regular inspections.

Your business is unique, and you have issues other businesses might not encounter as often. It might be because you do things differently or you have specific requirements for a current job. In either case, you want your checklists to be specific to your project or scope of work.

When working from a digital checklist template, review the essential checkpoints and remove those that don't apply or that you typically are not concerned about.

Your checkpoints should be items that typically go wrong in the field. Anything that has had recurring quality defects in the past should be represented. Use your experience from performing inspections to guide you here.

To finalize your project-specific checklists, add additional checkpoints for critical items that come up in you project progress meetings. This not only gives you the best possible checklist, but it also shows clients that you're tuned into their quality standards concerns. Clients love this.

Prepare project-specific checklists "just-in-time"

If you have checklists established around problems that come up commonly, you do not need to have an item listed for every detail of a task. Inspection checklists should have only 10-20 check points to heighten the inspector's awareness of critical items. A checklist is not a replacement for the specifications and does not need to recast every requirement as a checkpoint.

Keep checklists short and focused

As long as you have checklists established around problems that come up commonly, you do not need to have an item listed for every detail of a task. Inspection checklists should have only 10-20 check points to heighten the inspector's awareness of critical items. A checklist is not a replacement for the specifications and does not need to recast every requirement as a checkpoint.

Organize checklists the way you will inspect

If you will inspect your project by room or area, that is how you should organize your checklist. If what you inspect is repeated in several areas, your checkpoints should also be repeated and in an organized manner. This will also make the inspector's job easier, as he will not waste time moving back and forth between rooms.

Refine your checklists continuously

You should analyse your checklists on a regular basis and remove check points where problems rarely, if ever, happen. On the same note, you should add check points when deficiencies unrelated to an existing check point crop up. Time spent developing and refining your checklist now means less time spent dealing with quality assurance issues on every inspection in the future.

Conclusion

Creating a good quality checklist and refining it to meet your unique needs is vital to ensuring the quality of your projects. Keep checklists focused on critical aspects of your project and modify them as issues come up. That way, you'll have the ideal checklist in no time.

To learn more about FTQ360 Inspection Checklist Software – visit FTQ360.com. With over 300 preloaded quality and safety inspection checklist templates to choose from, you'll have your project-specific checklists setup in no time.

If you're interested in paper Inspection Checklist Templates, visit our online store at First Time Quality.