Quality Management in Design Process: A Case Study at Tat & Associates D’architectura Co., Ltd

Design consultant or designer plays an important role in project quality. Currently in Viet Nam, there are many requirements for design quality. However, investors (public or private sector) have not really focused on the management of the project design, and the role of consultant/engineer in the design process has not been properly concerned. This affects the quality of work negatively. In order to create a good construction work, quality should be paid attention to all stages, especially in the first design stage. A detailed and perfect design will help to minimize defects or failures in construction, thus save costs and expenses. During construction period, such minor defects or failures may cause personal injuries or work delays, leading to indirect costs of insurance, inspection or regulation. In summary, the success or failure of a project is greatly affected by the decisions during design and planning stage.

Design quality must refer to health and safety factor in the project. A lot of decisions made in planning and design process related to safety during construction, and such careless design can make it dangerous or difficult to carry on construction works. On the other hand, good plans may considerably reduce the possibility of accidents. Hence, design consultant bears the responsibility to the owner and the society for design quality, material specifications and functional performance in their design. Mr. Doan Ngoc Hoai Vinh made a case study which major objective was to study the Quality Management in Design Process, and in order to achieve this objective, three sub-objectives were needed to accomplish such as: (i) study the existing practices of design process and management in Phuoc Binh Apartment project; (ii) analyze the effectiveness of design process and management; and (iii) provide framework for design process.

Conclusion

Design process quality management is very important to make high-performance of design and construction services. However, there are a few design companies which apply quality management for the design process in Vietnam and there are many causes related to this problem.

1. They do not have design quality awareness.

2. They work by experience and habits

3. They have limited capacity.

During a period of construction boom when people has just known benefit, profit without regard the quality of building. On the other hand, recently, the quality issues are always considered a top priority by investors when they want to evaluate and select the design consultants and construction contractors. Below are the conclusions drawn from the three sub-objectives.

1.   Existing practices of design process

Quality management in the design process that starts before a project even begins and touches all aspect of our business/internal processes. Design process include: design planning, structure and responsibility, design integration, conceptual design, preliminary design, detail design, value engineering, design review, design verification and validation, design change control, bidding and negotiation, construction, and feedback data.  The main benefit of this management is reduced risk, better client satisfaction, advancements in knowledge and ways of doing things, better-educated staff, and better projects in technical and design sense. Disadvantages are small. This study gives a standardization of the design process to encourage/remind designer to practice and also encourage the senior staff to continue to advise the younger staff.

2.  Effectiveness of design process and management

This study provides an overview of quality management and the analysis of specific existing design process quality management. Most of the requirements of quality management have been covered and presented in the existing system. However, the quality problems occur in most of design process that caused main risk to owner such as schedule delay, extra cost, abortive works and generating V.O.

In order to apply quality management in design process of project effectively, design consultants need to define the factors that affect to the quality of the design process and set quality as requirements to performance. And QM also depends on the characteristics of different projects to build feedback and develop appropriately. For example, requirements of apartment project are different from hotel project. Additionally, design consultants need to pay attention to quality perception. So, it is necessary to implement the internal quality audit and provide training at different position. It helps to consolidate quality perception in design team effectively.

Through above assessment and analysis, the study established a framework of design process, where entire project teams include: client, architects and consultants meet early to establish the vision, goals, objectives, criteria, and process for successful project.

Recommendation

- The ‘traditional’ outcome often dissatisfied clients, project budget and schedule overruns, and completed projects that were not actually achieving the results that the client had originally intended. There ‘had to be a better way’ as we embraced the new technology era. The firm began to record the processes and tools, using information management systems to formalize tools, processes and began a new model of working in a highly interactive and collaborative manner with our clients.

- The firm developed a clear strategic vision and a strong organization with embracing of quality improvement. The firm based on its direction should align the design processes together through proper communication, sustainable development and empowering the human resources of organization and concentrate on creating nurturing corporate culture.

- Focus on quality people is that the firm do not hire when need help; hire when find the very best people. The firm conducting interviews all year round and when find a top quality person and hire him or her; adjust workload of staff and not adjust staff to workload. The firm provides excellent working conditions and environment, the latest computer equipment and software, flexible work schedules, excellent benefits, fair pay.

His thesis abstract is copied and pasted below.

Abstract

 v  Sometimes we lose the next project for a client, even when we have done a great job on the previous one.

- We probably do a lot more rework than we need to, but we do not know because we do not measure it.

- Our designers never know when to stop designing, and it impacts on the time to complete the project.

- Scope omission is a constant problem, and it is hard to get increasing fees for it.

- We are expected to manage the project team, but our people are not very good at keeping the project team on schedule.

These, and a lot of other situations that frustrate principals, are in fact quality problems in disguise.

The research aims to study project quality management and improvement. The scope of study was limited in design firm in Viet Nam. Cross literature was reviewed and real case analysis was implemented in order to find out the factors influencing on the quality issue and focus on the framework of quality management in design process.  

Recently, quality management has been applied widely in construction projects. As we all know that it is developed to manage the performance of design and construction activity. In Vietnam nowadays, people pay more attention to the quality in building projects as well as to meet client’s requirements as much as possible. Therefore, the objective of quality management is not only to enhance the quality of construction projects but also to raise the effect and productivity during construction period. All of this aims to satisfy client’s needs, as a result.

The overall objective of the research is to provide owner, project manager, designer, contractor with information and practice knowledge which could support them to handle the tasks and solve the problems more effectively with their limited resources. All of this, as a result, will help to achieve better quality outcomes.