Construction Quality Assurance/Quality Control Blog

How Corrective Action Plans Can Increase Your Profits

Posted by Ed Caldeira

When most construction quality managers hear the words “corrective action plan,” they think of a big screw up that they’ve got to fix. They also figure it’s going to cost their company money and affect their production schedule.

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Tags: standard operating procedures, corrective action plan

How-to Guide for Doing a Construction Site Quality Control Review

Posted by Ed Caldeira

There are lots of activities that quality managers need to be doing. But, near the top of the list are regularly scheduled construction site quality control reviews in the form of field walks. The reason you should do these QA/QC reviews is to perform an independent check-up on the quality of your constructed product.

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Tags: quality control, quality assurance, construction quality management

8 Essential Steps for Doing a Construction Project Quality Audit

Posted by Ed Caldeira

Your Project Quality Plan is in place. You think all contingencies are covered. You assume inspections are being conducted correctly. You figure your plan is being followed, your customer is happy, and your project is flowing smoothly, right?

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Tags: project plan, construction quality management, quality audit

How Successful are Your Pre Construction Meetings? The 5 Key Areas You Need to Cover

Posted by Ed Caldeira

Quality, safety, scheduling, administrative issues and, above all, how to keep your customer satisfied. These are the principal reasons you should hold a pre-construction meeting. A well-structured pre-construction meeting helps ensure that your project proceeds smoothly. It also eliminates confusion and ruffled feathers when you're faced with the inevitable issues that arise during a project.

For this discussion, we’ll focus on handling the QA/QC part of your preconstruction meeting. I’ll give you a few general guidelines, and then discuss the key topic areas you should cover.

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Tags: construction quality management, pre construction meetings

7 Steps for Managing Construction Quality Nonconformances

Posted by Ed Caldeira

Whether you’re dealing with difficult or simple nonconformances, your construction quality control plan should outline a systematic process to manage them. That way, you’ll consistently deliver quality results. And, your customers will have confidence that you tightly control specification deviations until you can find suitable resolutions.

In quality assurance circles, we don’t use the term nonconformance for all defects. Instead, we reserve the term for defects that you can’t quickly or cost effectively fix to meet your project’s quality standards.

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Tags: quality control, nonconformances

A Successful Quality Management Plan Requires Effective Leadership

Posted by Ed Caldeira

If you find yourself complaining about field personnel not taking construction project quality seriously, then this article should help you find some solutions.

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Tags: best-practices, construction quality management

How to Write a Quality Control Communication Plan That Works

Posted by Ed Caldeira

A communication plan will help you organize how you will create, collect, and distribute quality control-related information to your construction project quality team. I see a lot of projects where this planning isn’t done ahead of time and everyone has to figure this out bit by bit as they go along.  Quality communications are too important to be left to chance.  

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Tags: quality control, communication plan

How to Choose a Construction Quality Control Plan

Posted by Ed Caldeira

Construction Quality Control Plans range in size from under 30 pages to over 200 pages, from simple to comprehensive. So, how do you know what's the right quality control plan for your contract and company needs?

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Tags: quality plan, specifications

The Difference Between a Construction Quality Control Plan and an ITP

Posted by Ed Caldeira

While both Construction Quality Control Plans and Inspection and Test Plans are intended to control construction quality, your construction QC plan will focus on a wide-range of elements. Whereas, your inspection and test plan (ITP) will only focus on inspections and tests as a means of quality control.

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Tags: quality plan, inspection test plan

The Difference between a Nonconformance and a Punch List Item

Posted by Ed Caldeira

When construction inspections find defects, should they be handled simply as punch list items that need to be corrected (but need no special record keeping), or should they be managed as construction nonconformances that include the extra procedures and record keeping? The following guidelines will help you decide and should keep your quality record keeping as simple as possible.

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Tags: nonconformances