Construction Quality Excellence: Reaching Level Four

Level Four is the pinnacle of First Time Quality excellence – getting it right first time with a very high degree of certainty. And the result? Build times are faster than ever, operating costs are lean, and customers are enthusiastically showing their appreciation.

You’ll also find that your company is often the sole source for difficult projects.Reaching Level Four brings some surprising benefits too; you will be able to attract the best people and the best subcontractors– even in a scarce market – and there will be a general confidence in your ability to survive a downturn.

If you’re already taking quality management seriously, you’ll already understand that taking your Quality Management Program to the highest level possible is the best way to reap of the benefits of First Time Quality excellence

• Save time
• Reduce costs
• Increase margins
• Ensure compliance
• Improve reputation

Building a Maturity Model

The FTQ360 experts have formulated a Maturity Model that classifies Quality Management Program performance on a four-point scale – from basic and professional to advanced and expert.

The model was developed by considering the most important activities and tasks and what really constituted industry best practice quality program. We then categorized them into these ten groups: organization, management, strategy, accountability, planning, processes, controls, measurement, improvement, technology.

In this article, we are going to explain what you need to do to reach Level Four in the Construction Quality Management – Maturity Model but finding out what level you are already at beforehand might be a useful detour.

Take your own Maturity Assessment

We have created a powerful Maturity Assessment that will pin-point where you are on scale from basic to advances. By answering a few simple questions, you’ll be able to find out just how sophisticated your Quality Management program is today and how far you have already come on your journey to First Time Quality excellence.

Levels One – Three of the Maturity Assessment

Our previous blogs Construction quality excellence: Reaching level one, Construction quality excellence: Reaching level two and Construction quality excellence: Reaching level three focus on the basic foundations you need for a good quality program and what you will need to do to develop a more professional and advanced approach to construction quality – so, depending on your current maturity level and future aspirations, they may be worth a quick read too.

Level Four: Expert

By Level Four – the top level – achieving First Time Quality is all about identifying quality risks and proactively eliminating them. The lessons learned are systematically deployed on the job site and the scope of the Quality Program expands to pre-construction activities and commission in gas well as health, safety and environmental.

1. Quality external stakeholder communications

You can handle every aspect of your Quality Management Program on one single, cloud-based platform.

We recommend that you centralize the following functions.

? Requests for information (RFIs)

? Non-conformance reports

? Closeout punchlists

? Customer punchlists

? Access to project documents

? Deficiency and punchlist spreadsheets

2. Subcontractor self-document quality and safety compliance

You can streamline the review and approval of contract acted work and help improve quality and safety performance by documenting the completion of known risks.

We recommend that you specify the pictures and data required to document compliance, grant subcontractors tightly controlled access to your quality management systems and automate communications to notify field personnel when projects are ready for final review.

3. Commissioning suite of tools for equipment and buildings

You can keep organized and in control of detailed, multi-stage commissioning processes and plan the required inspections, tests, hold points and approvals by either equipment or asset serial number.

We recommend that you use specialized checklists for functional checks, record repetitive test data on dynamically expanding tables and submit completed commissioning plan-related reports by asset.

4. Extend quality to design, engineering and project administration

You can include pre-construction activities in your quality process and use specialized design and engineering checklists to set a standardized agenda for reviewing both accuracy and completion.

We recommend that you integrate quality performance measures and improvement processes into the company-wide quality management program, have field personnel report errors and omission deficiencies during construction, and require sign-off by multiple reviewers before final approval.

5. Pre-construction risk prevention

You can adapt quality controls to the relative importance of possible risks to help control the risks identified in the pre-construction and preparatory meetings.

We recommend that you embed drawing and specification details on checkpoints, evaluate total risks and actual exposure on dashboards and reports, and weight risk exposure values for quality and safety checkpoints.

6. ISO 9001 compliance

You can pass the most rigorous quality system audits with ISO9001 quality administration checklists and surveillance audits.

The FTQ360 Software Platform includes project inspection and test plans for ISO9001 administration activities, automatic posting of compliance within project quality plans, and visibility into compliance and full quality program deployment for certification auditors.

7. ISO 45000 safety compliance

You can pass the most rigorous safety audits with ISO45000 safety administration checklists and surveillance audits.

The FTQ360 Software Platform includes safety-specific inspection and audit plans, automatic posting of compliance with site-specific safety plans, and visibility into compliance and full quality program deployment for certification auditors.

Proactively Eliminate Quality Risks to Achieve First Time Quality – every time

Our key takeaway message here is that you proactively eliminate quality risks to achieve first time quality, every time.It’s the fourth and final step on the road to First Time Quality excellence.

Here you’ll learn about the most important aspects of the FTQ360 Software Platform – the key features that will help you reach the pinnacle of First Time Quality excellence by pro-actively eliminating quality and safety risks.

• Streamlined Communications
• Serious software for fast and easy issue communication.
• Consistent Processes
• Serious software ensuring accurate inspections from the whole team.
• Documented Compliance
• Serious software providing the definitive proof of project compliance.
• Integrated Safety
• Serious software with built-in safety compliance and risk reduction.
• Reduced Deficiencies
• Serious software with advanced tools and functionality to proactively reduce defects.

Over to you

We hope you found this blog article interesting and useful. If you have any questions, please feel free to connect with me.

At FTQ360, we're serious about quality. If you are too, we'd love to talk.