15ARC 8.

6 – PROJECT AND CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

Module 4
(Construction Management Techniques: Project Monitoring and Control)

Quality management in construction

What is quality management in construction?

Construction projects span a number of functions across a number of specialty parties and trades, but the
one thing they all share in common is their desire to deliver quality work - on time and on budget.
Quality management is a key pillar of overall construction project management, and is often the
difference between company's success and failure.

Quality management in construction is the policies, processes and procedures put in place (typically by
management) to improve an organisation's ability to deliver quality to its customers - whether those
customers are clients/owners, contractors or subcontractors - on a consistent and constantly improving
basis.

While every construction company on earth wants to deliver quality on every phase of works and every
project, it is the establishing of these internal and external principles and guidelines that actually results
in quality.
The major objectives of quality management are:
1. To minimise the defects on asset delivery or handover
2. To identify and solve defects and issues before your customers do - safeguarding your reputation
Achieving these objectives carries some many obvious benefits - none more beneficial than continuing
to get more work and building a strong positive reputation.
Creating a quality management plan for construction projects

Preventing mistakes is much more time and cost effective than correcting them - which is why
establishing a strong quality management plan is a good way to improve quality. The upfront investment
of creating a coherent and comprehensive quality management plan often pays big dividends throughout
the life of a project.
Outlined in your quality plan will be four (4) main sections which establish your:
1 Quality policies
2 Quality objectives (clear and measurable)
3 Requirement standards (ISO accreditations etc.)
4 Other statutory and legal requirements
As you can see, a quality management plan is both an internal and external tool for construction
companies. It ensures that you are adhering to and meeting the necessary quality standards to do work
legally and feasibly - and that you are structuring your internal quality control policies and objectives in
a way that enables that continuous improvement and ultimately good performance.
Establishing quality procedures

Once a quality plan is established and your 'goal posts' are set, the next obvious phase of quality
management is to create procedures, which enable you to achieve your objectives.
This phase of quality management design is often more troublesome for companies, as the quality
management starts to involve more moving pieces i.e it's easier to sit down and plan than it is to create
processes for tens or hundreds of people who then need to be trained and monitored etc.
In saying this, there are four (4) key areas of process focus which when tackled individually or through a
comprehensive quality management system or software come together to form this critical process
alignment. These key areas are:
1 Control of documents and records
2 Internal quality audits
3 Control of non-conformances
4 CAPA (corrective and preventative actions)
As you can see, these quality procedures form a stack through the way that your work moves - from site
capture (documents and records) through to corrective and preventative actions (actioning what is
captured on site).

Quality management forms and documentation

The quality management process typically starts with those quality management documents - which tend
to be plan oriented and comprehensive in nature - outlining and summarising quality management at a
high level.
Great quality management process on projects focuses more on how quality is captured, organised and
tracked from point where quality matters most - on site.
There are tens or hundreds of quality management forms ranging from simple quality punch lists, hold
points and witness points, ITP's (inspection and test plans) and specialty quality forms like welding
quality control checklists.
These forms are deployed to engineers, project managers and other workers to ensure that quality is
being met - and to inform management or other people where quality has not been met, so that it can be
fixed and actioned by the necessary party.
Some companies and teams manage these forms and documentation with paper-based forms, word docs
and PDFs, while others use digital forms, which enable greater quality standardisation, control and
insight.
Outside of these forms and documents - photos, videos and other records are also essential to ensuring
quality records are up to scratch for any eventuality including audits.