Quality Management System for Different Construction Project Strategies

Construction industry is a big business which needs a lot of capital investment. Each project has sophisticated mechanism which composed of any elements to manage. Therefore, head offices should have effective strategy to boost the organization to grow up. Moreover, quality of the company should follow strategy to enhance the managerial power of the organization.

Quality management is not only helping the organizations to grow to the market’s higher level but also increase creditability of the company to encourage a lot of customers. Without quality management, the organizations will have difficulty to improve, because if the organization manages to build the project without any quality standards, then they can get many claims or reworks. Therefore, quality improvement is one of the success factor that lead to the project successful.

Juran has identified the hidden costs of poor quality as represented in Figure below. Many organizations are only concerned to a few cost of poor quality such as reprocessing and rejects, but in reality there are many costs of poor quality such as delays, and damaged goods.
Therefore, quality management is important to implement in the organization to ensure the quality of products or services. Moreover, it also can be reduce cost and time that can lead the organization to be loss by increasing their quality level.

Hidden costs of poor quality Juran (1993, P.23)

Mr. Kittawat Sukosi made a research to study the project strategy and quality management. In order to accomplish this major objective, three majors were needed to achieved:

1. To study quality activities in the differences of project strategy of construction sites in Thailand.

2. To study how construction sites measure quality performance in the differences of project strategy.

Conclusion

Quality management is important for conducting premium performance of construction services.

Nowadays, quality management has been used for many construction companies in Thailand. In order to study about the relationship between project organization and quality management, two objectives was established. The first objective is “To study quality activities in the differences of project strategy of construction sites in Thailand”. This objective was established for study the mechanism of quality management activity in differences of strategy. The second objective is
“To study how construction sites measure quality performance in the differences of project strategy”. The purpose of this objective is to study about measurement of quality performance in differences of strategy.

Quality Activity

The project which established differentiation strategy is required to conduct ISO 9000 series, especially ISO 9001:2008 (newest version), while cost-leadership strategy is not require ISO standard. Quality manual report is just only established for differentiation project. Cost leadership strategy is focused on zero defects, while differentiation strategy has varied aspects such as safety and environment. QMR and quality manager is in-charge only differentiation project.

There are some activities which implemented for all cases such as quality inspection and testing, internal quality audit, equipment calibration, and corrective and preventive action. Environmental inspection and testing is implemented for some differentiation strategy. All cases are conducting safety management, but only differentiation project were implemented based on OHSHA 18000. Quality improvement program are performed for both strategies. However, the improvement relies on the quality activity that implemented and keeps record for analysis.

Quality Performance

In order to measure quality management, quality performance is an indicator of quality measurement. Cost-leadership strategy measures cost reduction and amount of rework in order to reach zero defect objectives. Customer satisfaction is implanted for both strategies, however, the factors of customer satisfaction checklist is differences. Internal audit is implemented in every case. The audit report can be used as a quality performance; again, the issue of internal audit of each project is different. Non-conformance report is performed only in differentiation project in order to improve work procedure by using this report. All cases have performed safety report, however, only differentiation project will raised safety to be a major issue in quality management. Moreover, environmental report is implemented in the differentiation project (only
on case study).

Recommendation for Further Study

This study is completed to discover the familiarities and differences of quality activity and quality performance. As a result, there is one case which they implement all of quality management system (QMS), safety management system, and environmental management system.

Interestingly, this approach can be implemented as an integrated management system. Therefore, the further study can be about the advantage and disadvantage of integrated management system.

His thesis abstract is copied and posted.
Abstract
The research aims to study relationship between project strategy and quality management. The scope of study was limited in Thailand. Qualitative method was used as a research methodology in order to accomplish the research objectives. Five cases in Thailand were selected in this study.
All of data in this study was given by the interviewees. Cross case analysis was implemented in order to find out the familiars and differences of quality activity and quality performance in each case study.

The result of the study was divided into two parts. The first part is quality activity in differences strategy. Cost-leadership strategy is performed quality management, but ISO 9001 was not established as a quality management system. However, quality assurance (QA) and quality control (QC) are implemented such as quality inspection procedure, internal quality audit, quality inspection and testing, and quality documentation system. Construction project which used differentiation strategy is established ISO 9001, especially 2008 version. Safety management is performed in order to reduce accident which can lead to enhance quality performance. The quality activities are based on ISO 9001:2008 such as combine audit, safety inspection, quality inspection and testing, environmental inspection and testing, control of non-conformance work, and quality documentation system.

Quality performance is the second result. Cost-leadership strategy is using cost of rework and number of defected nonconformities work in order to measure quality performance. Audit result is also the tool to evaluate quality performance throughout the entire project. Audit report, nonconformance work report, safety report, and environmental report are as the indicator of measurement of quality performance which the project which used differentiation strategy is using. Moreover, customer satisfaction is one of the quality performance indicators which both of strategies is evaluating. However, the measurement approach of customer satisfaction of each strategy is different.