OWNERS’ PROJECT QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

A CASE STUDY OF IMPERIA AN PHU PROJECT

 IN HO CHI MINH CITY, VIETNAM

By

Nguyen Ngoc Thi

Abstract

             

Construction industry is strongly developed today. Hence, project quality is the main requirement that the Owner has to engage to their customers and the government. Therefore, Owner should take part and closely manage from the beginning stage of the project to ensure project’s quality requirements.

In the past, project quality mostly depends on the Contractors and Supervisors, the main reason is that the Owner did not understand project management and their limitation of professional, staffs. Recently, this is changed. Owner has their own experts and staffs and establishes quality management system to manage the construction activities.

In this study, an Owner’s Quality Management System is introduced. This helps the Owner to establish the Quality Management System, procedures and difficulties facing during the implementation. Moreover, this study also explains the benefits of Total Quality Management in construction, difficult factors need to be solved and framework to apply TQM in construction project

Executive summary

Rationale of research

This research has been conducted to identify quality issues in building construction projects of Vietnam.

Objectives of study

To study owner quality management practices and practices in Imperia an Phu project and discuss the strengths, weakness and provide recommendation.

Develop quality management framework for high rise building construction.

Methodology  

The exploratory research method is used to review the literature owner’s quality management QA/QC process, total quality management.

Investigate data for quality performance of Imperia an Phu project and quality management system of owner.

Findings and conclusion

The Owner‘s Quality Management System should be established and committed by Top Management. The Project Manager organizes the project team which structures with clear responsibilities of members. Construction procurement must be developed in order to choose good contractors or suppliers. The project team must ensure that the implementation must be process in accordance with their programs and plans which are submitted by contractors and approved by Project Management Team. The Quality Management System should review and improve the effective of the system regularly and Total Quality Management is the highest mission that the System should adopt.

In case study, a high-rise building project was chosen, because high-rise buildings are become popular, nowadays. Author has analyzed the Quality Management System of project Owner at the construction stage and show out the strengths and weaknesses of the system. Moreover, from this case study, author has discussed the effort of the existing system to improve quality at project and the efficient of these improvement methods. In order to reduce the quality problems, the project management team decided to increase the efficiency of QA/QC programs, increase the efficiency of supervision work, improve working conditions for workers and record all Non conformance products. Because of some reasons, the improvement activities were not efficient enough. As a result the frequency of quality problems are not completely reduced.

Author has also proposed solutions to improve the efficient of Quality Management System and frameworks which help Owner to solve problems and manage the project in the construction phase. This Quality Management System proposed framework is not only applied in this case study but also is a useful framework for other project owners.

Recommendation

·         The responsibilities of each member should be clearly defined.

·         Company quality manual must be established and committed by Top Management.

·         The Quality Management System should develop and improve the construction procurement which can help them to get the good subcontractors and suppliers.

·         Let the constructors understand that perform the works in accordance with programs, plans is a must.

·         Project communication, information system should be maintained and improved.

·         Keep construction site safely and clean, subcontractors participation are the main keys to achieve Total quality management.