Quality Management System for Engineering Consultant Firms

Since the 1990s, Vietnam began integrating into the world economy, the Government has boosted infrastructure investment with many capital sources such as government budget, government bonds, ODA loans, etc. Although the country has gained great achievements, but the quality of these infrastructure projects is also an issue being debated, especially in foreign-invested projects designed and constructed by the well-known main consultants and main contractors in the world. Series of works having trouble in construction as well as operation, such as:

- The collapse side span of Can Tho Bridge in 2007

-Cracked appear at four submerged segments of Thu Thiem Tunnel in 2008

-Serious landslide on the Ho Chi Minh Route during operation in 2009

-Serious settlement and crack at Thanh Tri bridge project in 2011

-Settlement and crack on Cầu Giẽ - Ninh Bình Expressway in 2012

-Crack and settlement at Cai Rang bridge in Can Tho city in 2013

-Crack and settlement at East-West Highway project in 2013

Causes of these incidents have been explained or are being studied, which do not exclude the errors caused in design stage and supervision stage.

Loss because of problems in construction is usually great, so every employer wants to control the quality as soon as possible in order to eliminate the problems which can be anticipated. Through the project life cycle, risk and uncertainty at conceptual and design stage completely dominate other stages, so quality management in design stage is efficient. 

Moreover, according to Project Management for Construction: Fundamental Concepts for Owners, Engineers, Architects, and Builders by Chris Hendrickson and Tung Au “As with cost control, the most important decisions regarding the quality of a completed facility are made during the design and planning stages rather than during construction”. Therefore, quality management system is strongly necessary for not only the contractor but also the consultant to assure quality and prevent any unexpected problems.

However, now the local consulting firms do not really understand the meaning of the quality management system. Many companies simply think that QMS certificate is an amulet, which will give them competitive advantage in bidding. And most local consultant firms focus pay more attention to the profit but less to the quality.

Mr. Nguyen Quoc Huy made a case study which main objective to develop a quality management system for a consultant firm in design phase, which specified to infrastructure project in Vietnam, focusing mainly on four issues as follows:

(i) study of the theory and practices of project quality management in design phase;

(ii) evaluation of practical design quality in Southern Coastal Corridor Project;

(iii) analysis of the strength and weakness of quality in design;

(iv) lessons learnt and recommendations from the quality of design.

Conclusions

Design quality management is a significant factor affecting not only the design performance but also the construction performance and operation & maintenance. However, there are a few clients and consultant companies being aware of the important of quality management in design project in Vietnam. Therefore, great expenditures of money, time and resources are wasted every year due to non-existent or inefficient quality management. Reasons for this might be stated as follows: clients and consultants lack experience; construction market in Vietnam does not have enough transparency for fair competition; project management level is limited. Although many consultant companies in Vietnam have established their quality management systems according to TCVN ISO 9001:2008 as a movement, a few of them carry out study careful how to measure the effective of these quality management systems in their company, and what key performance indicators can be apply to increase the effective of their quality management system.

In order to achieve sustainable development in construction market, consultant companies must apply quality management in design. Objectives of the application quality management in the design are not only satisfying customer requirements, meeting the requirements of the regulatory and statutory, making benefits for clients and the community but also contributing enhanced the position of the company in the market. Quality management also helps to increase productivity of design engineers, decrease operation cost of design offices, improve service reliability, and provide an essential environment for technology advancement and innovation. With the desire to understand deeply the quality management in design, the existing practice design project - Southern Coastal Corridor – is studied. From this study, the strength and weakness of quality management in this project are identified and clarified, and lessons learned will be useful for future projects. Some main strength aspects in this project are management commitment at project level, establishing detailed document control procedure, and setting up a clear project organization chart. While there are many weakness aspects such as: does not have quality, quality policy, quality procedure, quality planning, customer focus, value engineering, monitoring and measurement, control of non-confirming product, analysis data, and improvement; design review just is formalistic; does not mobilize competent experts and useful design softwares.

In order to apply successfully quality management in design, project manager or team leader and administrators should consider some following factors

-          Management commitment on quality and continuous quality improvement should be established. Top managers must participate in development and implementation process.

-          Defining the requirements of the client as clear as possible, and as soon as possible will help to implement project smoothly. Define characteristics of project, analysis the present situation of project, identify problems root causes and their effects, and develop plan for corrective action.

-          Engineers must be instructed with the basics of quality management. Training and education about practice and theory of quality management at all level and in all phase are essential.

-          Teamwork should be encouraged to facilitate every engineer could get enough assistance to be successful individual. Improved quality performance must be implemented for the whole project team.

-          Statistical methods are the useful tool for monitoring and improving quality. Expenditure for measurement to achieve quality should be considered as an investment, because the companies which supply high quality services can enhance their competition and increase their revenue.

-          Design engineers must learn, understand and be familiar with contemporary construction techniques and construction materials. Then they can design projects constructible in terms of building.

Recommendation for further study

This research is done in terms of design phase of a project. But in a project, there include other phases such as feasibility study, bidding, construction and supervision, and operation & maintenance. In order to have a complete picture about quality management of construction consultant organizations as well as to achieve successful in implementation quality management in construction, further study should be done for other phases of project, especially in feasibility study phase and supervision phase.

His thesis abstract is copied below.

Abstract

Why do most of clients just concentrate on the quality in the construction stage? It is too late. Clients should control the quality from the input, and especially from the design phase. Because the more allocation during the design phase affects about 80% the cost, the project might save investment cost as well as avoid the unfortunate consequences later.

The study aims to assess the strength and weakness of project quality management in the design phase. The scope of study was limited in design organization specified in infrastructure work in Vietnam. Cross literature was reviewed and real case analysis was implemented in order to find out the strength and weakness of quality management, then lessons learned for design process. Another objective of this study is providing project managers, design engineers and who concerned a practice knowledge of quality management in design in order to help them manage the project, achieving the high quality outcome.

The result of this study shows that both client and consultant in the studied project still concentrate more on the cost and budget than the quality although this is a significant project funded by ADB and AUSAID. The study also recommends some work instructions for improving quality in the design phase. Design quality can only be improved when clients and consultant firms change their attitude toward quality management.