Revision as of 13:10, 12 June 2017

Abstract

Quality assurance is key when dealing with project management. The concept is to ensure that quality specifications will be fulfilled and lives up to expectations of clients and contractors. This is important for a variety of reasons, such as client satisfaction, safety, and environment. Obtaining a quality product which satisfies all stakeholders expectations is tricky, and can for the most part only be evaluated after construction has commenced. This is where quality assurance enters the picture. By implementing procedures thoroughly explaining which inspections should be done when and using which quality control measures, an assurance of sufficiently high quality can be made, which minimizes disputes between stakeholders. In this report, quality assurance is outlined with a short introduction of the three main types of quality assurance, then it is used as a tool for aligning expectations thereby minimizing disputes and raising the overall quality of the project, ensuring quality conformance. The precise specification of when quality is in conformance are not within quality assurance, instead different methods describing quality assurance will be outlined together with main factors influencing quality of projects including; Quality reward systems, ISO-standards, and empowerment of employees. Within these topics, an outline of different quality control methods is given including; cause and effect diagrams, inspection, and project improvement projects (PIP’s). Limitations of quality assurance are analyzed together with advantages, finally a conclusion of main points in the analysis is presented.

Introduction

Within project management, quality is a key parameter governing the success of a firm. Quality is defined as “The degree to which a set of inherent characteristics fulfils requirements” (Winch 2010), the specific requirements to be fulfilled are themselves hard to define accurately and poses a problem in construction. An attempt to accurately define goals on how a building is well-built have been made by Vitruvius, which state that a building should consist of “Utilitas, Firmitas” and “Venustas”, which is translated to “Utility, Strength” and “Beauty”, utility meaning that a building should be usable, strength meaning it should be durable and Beauty meaning buildings should be aesthetically pleasing. Using these as guidance, quality could be interpreted as the interested parties’ ability to fulfill these three goals. After goals are specified, assurance that conformance of quality level will be obtained is beneficial for ensuring trust between stakeholders, and is therefore an important factor cultivating, successful, collaboration.

Quality management systems

Quality management is comprised of three main parts:

• Quality Control (QC)
• Quality Assurance (QA)
• Total Quality Management (TQM)

Where quality control defines processes to be conducted in order to ensure that quality products and services are produced. This can be done in a variety of ways including statistical quality control, inspection and performance evaluation. These are all post construction control methods, other modern methods include preventative quality control measures, such as reevaluation of design and last planner management including all interested parties to an inclusive dialog, thereby minimizing errors due to bad communication. Quality control measures are crucial for ensuring project quality. The quality control measures can in most cases stand alone in a project, but in many cases quality assurance is a good complement.

Total quality management is the absolute management of all quality aspects including QC and QA. It works as the overall management process.

The governing principles behind quality management systems are determined precisely in ^[1]. The following is a summery of those.

• Customer focus
• Leadership
• Engagement of people
• Process approach
• Improvement
• Evidence-based decision making
• Relationship management of interested parties

These principles are general for all QMS systems regardless of size. With this being said, companies may adopt subsets within these different principles focusing more on specific purposes or explaining in detail aspects of some principles.

Quality Assurance management

Quality assurance, (QA), management is the part of general quality management systems, (QMS), which revolves around guaranteeing quality requirements are met. The reason for QA, is to develop procedures and routines which manages quality control methods ensuring quality of the project.

Why is quality assurance important?

Volkswagen Golf TDI 2.0 displayed at a car exhibit, displaying the clean diesel brand

In modern society quality products are becoming more available to the public. This increases the customer expectations with regards to quality and performance. Requirements for performance can have a variety of characteristics, such as environmental, resource or safety related. The capability of organizations to fulfill these requirements, is challenged. When failure to conform to quality requirements is present, organizations reputations and trust is decreased. These two factors, customer trust, and organizational reputation plays an increasingly important role for organizations. To give an example, consider the Volkswagen emission scandal in 2015.

Volkswagen case

Volkswagen is a German car brand which produces cars, and was in a period of years awarded multiple environmental awards for their low CO2 emission diesel cars. When the Environmental Protection Agency ran experiments on diesel cars from Volkswagen, they couldn’t replicate the emission rates Volkswagen was informing, leading to investigators demanding an explanation. This lead to the discovery of software implemented in the cars, designed to report lower false emission rates of the cars, such that they seem more environmentally friendly. When the EPA released their results documenting the systematic cheat to the public, a drop 20 % the first day, and 17 % the day after in Volkswagen shares was observed (cite Volkswagen article), showing just how important customer trust, reputation and quality conformance is for the company. Customer complaints are therefore critical to take care of and organizations often hire people just to answer customer complaints. This practice of continually evaluating quality management systems, through customer satisfaction, is one of the aspects identified in ISO-9001:2015 as a mandatory procedure for assessing performance and detecting faults or risks inherent in the company. Suggestions of performance evaluation models are given In section XX. The previous example of Volkswagen shows how important quality conformance is for companies, and why effective quality assurance methods are necessary to ensure customer requirements and legislative requirements to quality are fulfilled by organizations.

Three main types of systems

Certified Construction Manager or short CCM is the only certification accredited by the American National Standard Institute, (ANSI) under ISO-17024

Quality assurance systems can be characterized into three main categories.

• First-party system
• Second-party system
• Third-party system

Which are outlined in the following.

First-party system

First party systems, are systems where company themselves are responsible for quality conformance alone. This way only the company itself regulates and optimizes the quality of produced services and products, without intervention of external organizations.

Second-party system

Second-party systems, where suppliers follow the strongest marketplace standard which hasn’t been accepted through an independent organization such as ISO. An example of a second party system is the advent of software such as windows, which becomes a de-facto standard for other companies to follow, even though this service’s quality hasn’t been approved by an independent organization.

Third-party system

Third-party systems are when quality of services or products are controlled by independent organizations, thereby ensuring no conflict of interest. This approach of conformance with quality requirements, is determined best practice. ^[2]. An example of a third-party system is the ISO system, which certifies companies which fulfill criteria regarding quality. Another company which certifies construction managers is the Construction Management Association of America, (CMAA), see ^[3]. They can certify construction managers which fulfill requirements outlined in American National Standards Institute, (ANSI) which is following the international ISO:17024 standard ^[3]. A more detailed description of the ISO-9001:2015 standard is outlined in the following.

ISO-9001:2015, a third-party system

Since the transition into the post-modern construction era, where projects are "unique" and planned continuously throughout the project life cycle using systems such as the Last Plannar system ^[4], focus on quality requirements plays an increasing role. The third party independent organization ISO, has therefore been established with the goal of setting quality standards. Companies can be granted a certification from ISO-standards if they fulfill these requirements. In order to fully understand terms and definitions used in DS/EN ISO-9001:2015, the reader is directed to definition standard DS/EN ISO-9000:2015 ^[5]. If a company has fulfilled all regulatory specifications defined in ^[1], then it can be certified. This certification means that the customer is assured that requirements set, were met thereby providing assurance that quality is up to standard.

This way of assuring quality services and products through certification, is effective because of the independence of the ISO-cooperation. Which otherwise would be deemed untrustworthy, an attribute devastating for the entire building process. The independence therefore cultivates trust between customer and contractor, and is the main reason that third-party systems are deemed best practice.

Commissioning as quality assurance

Commissioning stems from quality assurance on ships, which is conducted on all mayor ships before venturing out on the open sea, in order to ensure quality standards are met. In recent years, commissioning have been tested on building projects as an attempt to lower costs arising from late delivery, renovation, fault correcting, etc. And to optimize customer satisfaction levels, together with more accurate budget predictions.

The process of commissioning is fairly simple, it evolves gathering main stakeholders from all parts of a specific construction including e.g. engineers, entrepreneurs, carpenters, builders, users, architects, etc. together continuously throughout the project phases on a weekly basis, such that dialog and collaboration increases. This ensures initial quality requirements are met and unforeseen problems are dealt with, before continuing construction, thereby minimizing needs for rebuilds.

Commissioning takes time and costs money. This should be recognized and taking into account in the tender phase and preferably written into suppliers contracts thereby ensuring all parties will attend meetings. This is crucial, since in many cases, systems are cross-correlated with each other, plumbing is correlated with heating which is connected with walls and isolation, and so-on and so-forth. For the procedure to be effective all relevant parties must attend the meetings and communicate otherwise quality will deteriorate.

Advantages

The main advantage of general quality assurance is increased trust between parties that best practices are upheld. The increased trust, facilitates improved efficiency throughout the building process and enables collaborative efforts for improving overall performance. This can result in a positive feedback loop where quality is continuously improved together with trust. Some positive effects resulting from the increased quality are; a minimization of the number of disputes leading to lawsuits, improved customer satisfaction, improved reputation of contractors, entrepreneurs, suppliers, etc. and reduction of costs associated with poor performance. Quality assurance is therefore an important aspect of quality management and should be put under focus, especially during early stages of construction. Advantages of the previously outlined methods are given in the following sections.

Third-party system

Advantages of the third party system, include among others, an independent assurance that regulations and agreements are upheld and in conformance with international and national standards. Another advantage is that it allows customers to easily identify companies renown for providing quality services.

Challenges

Conclusion

Abbreviations

• ANSI - American National Standards Institute
• ISO - International Standard Organization
• CMAA - Construction Management Association of America
• CCM - Certified Construction Manager
• QMS - Quality Management Systems
• QA – Quality Assurance
• QC – Quality Control
• TQM – Total Quality Management
• EFQM - European

Annotated Bibliography

Winch, Graham M. 2010, “MANAGING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS”, 2’th edition, WILEY-BLACKWELL, ISBN 978-1-4051-8457-1.

DS/EN ISO 9000:2015, “Quality management systems – Fundamentals and vocabulary (ISO 9000:2015)”, Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, approved by CEN, Göteborg plads 1 DK-2150 Nordhavn.

DS/EN ISO 9001:2015, “Quality management systems – Requirements (ISO 9001:2015)”, Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, approved by CEN, Göteborg plads 1 DK-2150 Nordhavn.

“Volkswagen the scandal explained” 10. December 2015, BBC News, Russel Hotten, http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34324772 seen 08/06/2017.

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} DS/EN ISO 9001:2015, “Quality management systems – Requirements (ISO 9001:2015)”, Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, approved by CEN, Göteborg plads 1 DK-2150 Nordhavn.
2. ↑ Winch, Graham M. 2010, “MANAGING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS”, 2’th edition, WILEY-BLACKWELL, ISBN 978-1-4051-8457-1
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} http://cmaanet.org/about-cmaa, website explaining in detail CMAA's goals and ethics, seen 12/06/2017
4. ↑ "Lean Construction & Last Planner System", S. Rolf, DTU, January 10, 2017, internal link: https://cn.inside.dtu.dk/cnnet/filesharing/download/cc9fa450-000e-41b0-a037-c6d6bdc16f15
5. ↑ DS/EN ISO 9000:2015, “Quality management systems – Fundamentals and vocabulary (ISO 9000:2015)”, Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, approved by CEN, Göteborg plads 1 DK-2150 Nordhavn.