Owner Project Management Approach for Quality Performance of a School Project

Construction is one of the most complex industries due to its heavy influence in lots of elements and involvement with many parties such as the Owner, the Consultant, and the Contractor etc.. This leads to the difficulty in managing the quality of product in construction. Since clients are becoming more and more demanding on the product quality, construction companies in this high competitive market are now striving to improve the quality management aspect as much as possible.  There is no doubt that apart from the traditional relationship, quality has become one of the key factors in the survival and success of construction companies.

In Viet Nam nowadays, there are many issues related to the quality of construction project. Therefore, one being able build a quality management system for a particular project will certainly gain a competitive advantage over the competitors and meet the client’s expectation accordingly.

Recently, there have been a lot of foreigner investors come to Vietnam and invested in the development of international schools with high quality facilities to attract potential parents and satisfy their expectation. Unfortunately in some cases, the investors cannot get what quality they were guaranteed due to the following problems:

 1. Project delayed

2. Poor coordination between Contractor and Sub-contractors

3. Miscommunication among participants’ parties

4. Poor management in terms of scheduling, planning, controlling, etc.

5. Low quality in finishing work.

Mr. Nguyen An Vi Nghia made a case study which objectives were to: (i) study owner project management for managing quality performance starting from design, construction and handover; (ii) discuss strengths and weaknesses; (iii) propose recommendations; (iv) highlight lessons learnt; and (v) develop a Quality Management System framework.

 

Conclusion

The following conclusions were drawn after accomplishing the objectives:

 

Objective 1: The purpose of this study is considered and analysed the way the owner managed the quality performance of school project from the design stage to handover construction stage. The author found out that the way the owner managed the quality of project was not good enough, and there were many serious problems remained.

Objective 2: Strengths and weaknesses

Some major strengths of project were identified such as:

1. Standardized information by owner such as colour, size of function rooms, furniture arrangement, design brief, draft design, etc.

2. Owner has the technical team, who able to support with the design and construction work.

3. The school is a simple building for construction.

4. The owner is an expert in school operation and they have run many schools before.

However, some major weaknesses and sources of the problems were also identified such as:

1. The owner’s requirements and expectation were unclear from the beginning. Owner was the source of problem

2. The designer did not conduct a land survey before designing. Designer was the source of problem

3. Tender document was insufficient and inconsistent. Owner, designer and appraiser was the source of problem

4. Project members did not know clearly about the project’s objectives. Owner was the source of problem

5. Unrealistic schedule. Owner was the source of problem

6. Unclear responsibilities and scope of works in the contract. Owner was the source of problem

7. Owner did not test and commission before signing off the handover letter. Owner was the source of problem

8. Owner did not prepare any form or check list for inspection. Owner was the source of problem.

Objective 3: Recommendations

In order to solve and to prevent the problems, the author proposed the following:

1. The owner needs to provide clear requirements and expectation in the beginning of each step

2. The owner needs to request designers to go to the land site to study the land condition and the design should be suitable with land condition.

3. The owner should provide sufficient tender document for bidding and make sure that the contractor’s proposals followed the template. By this way, it will be easier for the owner to compare “Apple to Apple”.

4. Before the start of the construction, the owner should organize the meeting to brief all project members about project’s goal and their expectation for the project

5. The owner needs to have a good master schedule to ensure that the construction work has sufficient time for proper construction. They need to recognize that “if we have unrealistic time, we will not have good quality product.

6. Besides providing clear requirements and expectation, the owner also needs to write down clearly the responsibility and scope of works of other parties related to project.

7. The owner needs to conduct the testing and commissioning of the whole school before signing off the handover letter. For efficiency of the testing and commissioning step, the owner needs to appoint people who have fully knowledge for testing and commissioning parts.

8. To save the inspection time and more efficiency inspection, the owner needs to prepare the check list and tools related to the work they want to inspect.

Objective iv: Highlight Lessons learned

 

Below are some of the works owner needs to prevent and some works they need to maintain and improve:

1. Prevent changes.

2. Prevent contractor to construct the work without site engineer’s supervision

3. Prevent construction’s finishing stage in rainy season.

4. Prevent or reduce the construction works during studying time.

5. Prevent unrealistic duration for construction fixed by owner.

6. Provide the design brief and draft design as requirements of project’s concept design.

7. Provide the furniture manual is required for project’s concept design. The owner hired a professional foreign consultant company for concept design and hired a local consultant company for basic and detailed design. This was a good idea since it saved the design cost. However, the owner needs to manage their communication with each other and control them accordingly.

8. The owner in-house project team was appointed as the project management team. However, the allocation of team members should be more sufficient since the personnel are trained properly to manage the construction project.

 

Objective v: Develop a quality management system framework

 

The owner can use that QMSF for their future projects in term quality approaching. After studying the above factors, the author found that the problems related to communication, unclear requirements and unreasonable schedule were the most common problems occurred in school project. And that was also the main caused for project delayed and not good quality as well.

 

To support the theories in this study, the Quality Management in Construction Project eBook was the main source for theoretical and management tool to manage the quality in construction.

 

Besides some studies as mentioned above, the report still has some limited and did not study clearly the following parts:

1. Financial source is the most important for construction project and it affects directly to the quality of product.

2. How to manage the contractor and sub-contractors in term of quality

3. How to manage the quality of work in construction site

4. The applicability of the proposed solution in reality.

5. Managing the contract in terms of consultant and construction

6. The situation of this study is from the owner’s view. Thus, the study just studies some factors related to the owner’s view only.

 

Recommendations

 

In general, to prevent problems occurred; the owner should follow some recommendation as blow:

1. More careful in feasibility study

2. Clear requirements from initial step of project.

3. Clear consultant’s responsibilities and write down clearly their scope of works into the contract.

4. Get user involves in the beginning of project to prevent the changes and not usage. It is a waste of time and money.

5. The owner is developing more and more school projects. Thus, they should standardize all school facilities, brand and design requirements from the design step to handover step so that the quality of school project will be getting better and better.

6. Try to manage the time schedule and plans to avoid the unreasonable time schedule. It is one of the major factors that affect the quality of project.

7. Applying the tools to measure the quality of product.

Design process

1. Applying quality management system framework

2. Applying QA/QC for design process

3. In the tender requirement, the owner needs to specify that the contractors’ proposals must follow exactly 100% of the owner’s BOQ (including format, content and specification). In case the contractor has some comments or further proposals, they should put it in an appendix of proposal. The BOQ’s specification needs to specify the materials, brands and sources of equipments. To study the contractors’ proposals, the owner needs to have professional people who have fully knowledge to check and compare the contractors’ proposals and make sure the comparison is “Apple to Apple”.

 

Construction process

1. Applying Construction Quality Assessment System (CONQUAS) for quality assessment.

2. Using QA/QC for construction process

3. Using some tool to measure quality as CONQUAS

4. Preparing and using check list for construction inspection.

5. Nowadays, almost people prefer has good quality for their project and they have recognized that high quality and more investment will go together. Thus, CONQUAS method will be used more in the future, because it is very useful for quality assessment. Regarding to some of recommendation for construction process, I would like to recommend that owner should use Quality Management System Framework as proposed in Chapter 3 (please refer 3.8 of Chapter 3) for whole project as standardize and consistent for their school system overall of the world. Besides, Owner applies CONQUAS method for quality assessment

Abstract

In construction project, the scenario of each project is not the same. Only if small thing goes wrong in construction phase, nonconforming work is very difficult for us to repair or take remedial action and in some cases it is impossible to get fixed. Furthermore, quality management is affected by many elements such as manpower, technique, unforeseen weather etc. Therefore, construction phase is very difficult to determine the expected quality.

Besides, scope of the work, cost and time of delivery are also important characteristics of quality. Quality in construction project is not only the quality of product, technique and equipment used in construction but the total management approach from the beginning of project to completion stage. The quality of construction depends mainly upon the control and monitor of construction, which are the primary responsibilities of the contractor.

This report has been analysed based on a real school project in Viet Nam and discussed clearly about project performance from the beginning step to the very end. And then, it also proposes solutions on how to get better performance for any cases especially school project.

Regarding to the practice process, the report has also built the quality management system framework to serve as a management model for developing school projects in Viet Nam.