Many of my customers say they’re glad their client demanded?(required? asked for?) a construction quality plan. Well, that's not exactly what they say at first.

But, they do say that their completed quality plan has been a great catalyst for upgrading their company-wide quality management practices, and has resulted in winning more bids, saving money, and keeping customers happy.   

If you currently manage quality with more heart and soul than methods and procedures, there’s no doubt that you can benefit from the more formal, systematic approach contained in a comprehensive quality plan.

A construction quality plan template based on industry best practices will show you what a fully formed construction quality management system should consist of. And, it’s an excellent tool for developing and improving your own company-wide quality system.

Here are my suggestions on how to get started with your improvements:

Use the construction quality plan as a checklist to assess your current practices.  As you go through each section of the plan, ask yourself a few questions:

• Do we do this?
• How do these methods compare to what we currently do?
• What changes should we make to our quality management system?

Update the quality plan with your future quality management system practices.  In this step, you’re planning a future vision of how your company quality system should work.

• Write down an accurate description of the existing quality practices you would like to keep
• Describe the new methods you would like to add
• Develop ideas on how you would like to carry out those new methods

Develop a consensus for your new quality management methods. Open your new quality system ideas to discussion, debate, and compromise. Continue to update, revise, and clarify your construction quality plan until there is agreement on your company standard for managing quality.

Implement your new quality management system methods on an upcoming project. Choose a project to use as a trial for some of your new quality management practices. Use the experience on this project and others to continually refine your company quality management system.

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About the Author - Ed Caldeira is founder of First Time Quality, LLC, specializing in submittal-ready construction QA/QC plan templates and custom quality plans as well as construction quality inspection and punchlist software.