Quality Procedures for a Construction Project

In order for a construction company or a construction project to function properly, internal processes and procedures that set up the framework of its basic operational activities are almost always required.

ISO:9001 clearly specifies which Procedures need to be documented in order to fulfil the standard’s minimum requirements.

These are the following 5:

• Control of Documents
• Control of Records
• Internal Audits
• Control of Nonconforming product (NCRs)
• Corrective Actions

Taking into acount the complexity of (especially) the bigger infrastructure projects like Commercial Buildings, Hotels, Marine Projects, Highways, Tunneling, Railways or Airports, it’s quite difficult to set up a Quality Management System only with these 6 procedures.

Even if you manage to do so, in the beginning, it is almost certain that you will probably be asked by your Client or Client’s representatives to demonstrate how many of the other processes actually exist on the Project.

This is to make her (the Client) sure that everything is working as it should, but there might even be a specific clause in the Contract obliging you to document those extra procedures.

So, some of the most common additional procedures/processes that you might need to have in place for a Construction Project are:

• Procurement and Logistics Procedure
• Codification of Documents and Drawings (it might be included in the Doc.Control procedure)
• Design Procedure (extremely critical procedure in which you specify how the design of the project is being undertaken, reviewed an issued)
• Subcontracting Procedure (also very critical in order to demonstrate how you manage properly your subcontractors)
• Temporary Works Procedure (for all the temporary works that exist on site and the way their design and construction are managed)
• Management of Plant & Equipment (along with maintenance plans and inspection regimes)
• Handover, As-Built and Completion Procedure (useful so that you finally hand over all of the records to the Client on time)
• Inspection and Quality Control Procedure (specifying the basic framework for the inspections that are carried out on site)
• Surveying and Setting out Procedure
• Material Approvals (specifying how the permanent materials will be inspected and approved by the Client/Designer)
• Reporting Procedure (describing the format and the frequency of the reports required by the contract)
• Cost Control Procedure
• Calibration Procedure
• Assessing Client satisfaction
• Request for Information Procedure (RFI)
• Design Field Change Procedure (for changing parts of the design on site because of several restrictions)
• Training Procedure
• Control of Change Procedure (extremely important on how any change is managed and recorded on the project)

The list can literally be endless and it can of course be tailored to the needs and the contractual requirements of any specific project.

There are of course numerous other procedures for Health, Safety, Environment, HR, Accounting but I am only dealing with the Quality stuff here that are the backbone of the QMS.

However, the simplest you keep your system, the easier will be for the people who are going to implement it (that’s a big discussion for another post…).

Otherwise you end up having a system that no one is following, no one has ever read in the Project and it only exists in order to make the external auditors and your Clients happy.

Is that really what you want as Quality professional in construction ?

Do we really want to create a bureaucratic Quality Management system which is just adding one more headache to the Engineers and the Project Managers?

The best single advice is (as for almost everything in life): keep it simple!

But this is where it becomes tricky and harder than most of the people think.

As Leonardo Da Vinci said hundreds of years ago:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

More than anything else, the ITP is the main document that will plan and manage the test and inspection activities for providing assurance, control and documented evidence over the constructed works.

This is something that would definitely make your Clients happy at the end of the Project.

Starting the works without an (at least submitted to the Project Manager for approval) Inspection and Test Plan is an extremely bad practice and a clear nonconformity in many contracts.

It is true that in the last 20 years, there has been a big change in the industry regarding Health and Safety Management, and the existence of a Method Statement and Risk Assessments prior to the commencement of the actual works on site is now (more or less) a standard practice in every construction project.

Can we say the same for the ITPs, though?

Not really…