The Difference Between a Construction Quality Control Plan and an ITP

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.

Inspection and Test Plans

With an inspection and test plan, you plan inspections and tests to catch defects or nonconformances before they become part of your final construction product. For example, if your company fabricates steel components, your ITP may include inspecting incoming materials and performing x-ray weld inspections to make sure that weld penetrations meet your specifications.

The inspection and test plan is basic and essential. In construction, every purchased material and phase of work should be inspected for compliance to specifications.

But, what can you do to improve the chances that you’ll find fewer problems? That’s where the broader scope of your quality control plan comes in.

Construction Quality Control Plans

A construction quality control plan (a.k.a QA/QC plan or QC plan) includes an inspection and test plan, but goes beyond inspecting. With a quality control plan, you’ll control the quality of labor, equipment, and suppliers. You’ll also control work procedures to improve quality throughout the whole construction process, i.e. not just after the material is delivered or the phase of work completed.

So, using our steel fabrication company again, if your company fabricates steel components, your quality control plan will control which welding machines you use, the suppliers you buy your materials from, and how you qualify your welders e.g. by requiring skills certification and sample tests.

When you control critical elements of the construction process, you will get more reliable results. Clearly, with the added controls that are part of a complete quality control plan, you’ll have fewer problems to fix and higher levels of quality from start to finish.

Download a Sample

To get a better understanding of the difference, you can download samples from our website of both an Inspection and Test Plan and a Construction Quality Control Plan.

We offer templates of both plans, but most often, we recommend you choose a construction quality control plan template to ensure your highest construction quality controls.

In addition to our submittal-ready construction quality control plan templates, you may also be interested in learning more about our construction quality control / inspection checklist software.