11c. Managing Construction Conformance
11c. Managing Construction Conformance
11c. Managing Construction Conformance
Quality has widely been recognized as a distinctive competency that can be used by business
to increase profitability and market share. The recognized success of Japanese firms with low
cost, high quality, reliable and innovative products has had considerable impact on the western
attitude to quality, particularly in forcing them to rethink their belief that quality is expensive
(Love et al. 1995). While this concept is well understood in the manufacturing industry, the
same cannot be claimed for the construction industry.
Quality management has broadly two aspects – Quality Assurance and Quality Control.
Inspection is also considered a part of quality management (generally as part of quality control).
Quality Management systems should follow the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle. The basic
processes under quality management system is outlined in the figure below.
As per ISO, the basic principles of project quality management are –
• Customer Focus
• Leadership
• Involvement of people
• Process Approach
• Systems Approach
• Continual Improvement
• Factual Approach to decision making
• Mutually beneficial supplier relationship
Quality standards obtained from modern construction projects have not kept pace with
developments in technology and management in construction industry. Recurring incidents of
faulty design and construction have caused untold damage and loss of life and property.
Economic and legal implications of construction failures are nothing compared to the human
lives that are lost and the permanent or temporary physical, mental and psychological suffering.
Construction quality can be affected by:
• Whether a clear set of design and drawings is available—sometimes the confusion in
design and drawings may show up in poor quality of construction
• Whether a clear, well-laid-out and unambiguous set of specifications is available
• Whether a clearly defined quality-control methodology exists
• Whether there has been usage of proper materials, workers and equipment during the
construction processes.
Three major quality control methods commonly used on construction projects are:
• Inspection
• Testing
• Sampling
Companies should first establish a minimum quality standard that will be the basics of
acceptance or rejection. Appropriate quality control methods can thereafter be used to judge if
variations are within the acceptable tolerances. Best results are obtained if quality control is
consistent and the techniques used are appropriate.
1.2.2. Quality Assurance
According to ISO, quality assurance is defined as a set of activities whose purpose is to
demonstrate that an entity (such as product, processes, person, department and organization)
meets all quality requirements. QA activities are carried out in order to inspire the confidence
of both customers and managers, that all quality requirements are being met.
In the context of construction, quality assurance activities include all those planned and
systematic administrative and surveillance functions initiated by project owner or regulatory
agents to enforce and certify, with adequate confidence, compliance with established project
quality standards to ensure that the completed structure and/or its components will fulfil the
desired purposes efficiently, effectively and economically. The increase in complexity in a
project has further increased the need for more efficient QA measures to ensure compliance
with contract specifications. Quality assurance programmes encompass the following:
• Establishing the procedure for defining, developing and establishing quality standards
in design, construction and sometimes the operational stages of the structure and/or its
components
• Establishing the procedure to be used to monitor, test, inspect, measure and perform
current and review activities to assure compliance with established quality standards,
with regard to construction materials, methods and personnel
• Defining the administrative procedure and requirements, organizational relationships
and responsibilities, communications and information patterns, and other management
activities required to execute, document and assure attainment of the established quality
standards.
1.2.3. Inspection
Inspection usually entails checking the physical appearance of an item against what is required.
Activities such as measuring, examining, testing and gauging one or more characteristics of a
product or service and comparing this with specified requirements are part of inspection. It is
generally a non-destructive qualitative observation such as checking performance against
descriptive specifications and, thus, it could be subjective in nature. In some cases, gauges or
machines may be required to do some simple measurements or examinations. Collecting
concrete cube samples and testing them for quality interpretation is one of the most common
examples of inspection in concrete construction operation. The three common levels of
inspection are -
(1) at the time of receiving the raw materials, parts, assemblies and other purchased items;
(2) at the time of processing; and
(3) final inspection prior to acceptance of product.
2.TYPE
3.DIMENSIONS
4.LINE
5.LEVEL
6.VERTICALITY/PLUMB
7.RIGHT ANGLE
8.GABDI SHUTTERS
9.CUTOUTS
10.GROUT TIGHTNESS
11.STRIPPING TIME
Control Quality is the process of monitoring and recording results of executing the quality
management activities in order to assess performance and ensure the project outputs are
complete, correct, and meet customer expectations. The key benefit of this process is verifying
that project deliverables and work meet the requirements specified by key stakeholders for final
acceptance. The Control Quality process determines if the project outputs do what they were
intended to do. Those outputs need to comply with all applicable standards, requirements,
regulations, and specifications. This process is performed throughout the project. The inputs,
tools and techniques, and outputs of this process are depicted in the figure below.
• Project Documents:
– Lessons learnt register: Inputs from past project data related to quality.
– Test and Evaluation Documents: Guidelines that establish the testing and
evaluation procedures. Inspection and Test Plan.
• Approved Change Request: Defect Repairs, revised work methodologies, revised
schedules etc.
• Work Performance Measurement: Planned v/s Actual data for technical, schedule & cost
performance.
• Organizational Process Assets: Quality standards, policies, work methods, issue & defect
reporting procedures etc.
• Data Representation:
– Cause and Effect Diagram: The Cause and Effect Diagram (Ishikawa Diagram)
is a popular group decision making tool to identify root causes of quality defects in
construction projects.
– Control charts: Control charts are used to determine whether or not a process is
stable or has predictable performance. Upper and lower specification limits are
based on the requirements and reflect the maximum and minimum values allowed.
Upper and lower control limits are different from specification limits.
The control limits are determined using standard statistical calculations and
principles to ultimately establish the natural capability for a stable process. The
project manager and appropriate stakeholders may use the statistically calculated
control limits to identify the points at which corrective action will be taken to
prevent performance that remains outside the control limits.
Control charts can be used to monitor various types of output variables. Although
used most frequently to track repetitive activities required for producing
manufactured lots, control charts may also be used to monitor cost and schedule
variances, volume, frequency of scope changes, or other management results to help
determine if the project management processes are in control.
– Histograms: Histograms show a graphical representation of numerical data.
Histograms can show the number of defects per deliverable, a ranking of the cause
of defects, the number of times each process is noncompliant, or other
representations of project or product defects.
– Scatter Diagrams: A scatter diagram is a graph that shows the relationship between
two variables. Scatter diagrams can demonstrate a relationship between any element
of a process, environment, or activity on one axis and a quality defect on the other
axis.
• Meetings: Two approaches (types of meetings) can be used to control quality as part of
collaborative decision making.
– Approved change requests review. All approved change requests should be
reviewed to verify that they were implemented as approved. This review should
also check that partial changes are completed and all parts have been properly
implemented, tested, completed, and certified.
– Retrospectives/lesson learned. A meeting held by a project team to discuss:
▪ Successful elements in the project/phase,
▪ What could be improved,
▪ What to incorporate in the ongoing project and what in future projects, and
▪ What to add to the organization process assets
1.3.3. Outputs of Quality Control
• Quality control measurements: Documented results of QC activities.
• Validated Changes: Changed or repaired item is inspected for further acceptance or
rejection.
• Validated Deliverables: Inspection of targeted milestone completion for further
acceptance or rejection.
• Organizational Process Asset Update: Compilation of completed checklists & lessons
learnt documentation.
• Change Requests: Incorporation of major change in product or process into project
management plan.
• Project Management Plan Update: Incorporation of QC inputs into QIP.
• Project Document Update: Updating Quality Standards based on QC activities and their
outcome.
The table below outlines the standard practices and documents that construction projects
generally follow.
1.5. Non-Conformance
The non-conformance report should contain the relevant clause of the audit standard, the
reference of procedure, the location, the mention of particular activity where non-conformance
has been observed, the nature of problem, the evidence, and the scale of problem mentioning
whether non-conformance is to be graded as major or minor.
The procedure for non-conformance identification and rectification is shown the diagram
below.
A construction site team needs to distribute the responsibilities to manage different quality
management system (QMS) functions for client satisfaction and zero-defect outputs. The
responsibility matrix is shown in the table below.