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.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to construction quality control. Every company will have different processes, checklists, and punch list items based on the type of construction, subcontractors, and regulatory requirements. However, there are some common mistakes that we have seen in our decades of experience with construction quality control.

Do any of these potential quality control pitfalls sound familiar to you?