A successful construction project is one that achieves a balance between cost vs. budget and resources spent vs. schedule, without sacrificing quality. Finding that balance is the ultimate goal of owners, architects and engineers involved in a project. One important method a construction team can use to achieve this balance is quality control—observation techniques and activities that aim to identify whether the architect and contractor’s construction means and methods fulfills an owner’s requirements.

Quality assurance is a set of planned and systematic activities which are laid out before a building project starts, while quality control inspects and verifies the craftsmanship of a construction project against those plans. But even the best laid plans are never foolproof—they must be monitored continuously throughout the construction process.

A robust quality assurance and control plan details the steps to meet minimum standards of material and workmanship set forth by the project specifications. Construction teams that are proactive during the planning and design phases will improve the overall quality of the construction documents, mitigate risk and secure more business for the owners, architects and contractors.

The Roles of Total Quality Management and Communication

Making a construction total quality management plan revolves around communication. One of the best tools that construction teams have at their disposal for this is building information modeling technology. BIM software streamlines communication between teams via a federated model that communicates over a network. 3D models are vetted to define quality so that lesser quality objects and practices do not make it into the construction documents workflow.

Organizations such as the National Institute of Building Science, American National Standards Institute and American Society for Testing & Materials spell out quality standards that can be integrated into the design, construction and occupancy processes. Most importantly, total quality management verifies the quality of the output data in the model before it is constructed in the real world. Construction companies that integrate BIM with total quality management strategies leading the industry in productivity and construction safety and ensure that a facility performs according to the owner's requirements over its lifetime.

The Roles of Total Quality Management and Coordination

The project owner, architect and contractor teams each have a stake in the total quality management process. If the quality of project’s components, assemblies or workmanship is out of compliance and rework is required during construction, it can become a costly issue for the contractor. Some quality issues can even lead to costly litigation and damage reputations beyond construction. Therefore, managing quality over the life expectancy of a facility should be a major consideration of a successful project delivery process. Companies with an integrated BIM and total quality management approach lead the industry in overall productivity and profitability while also decreasing safety-related incidents.

BIM leverages a single source with multiple-user platforms that support owner, architect and contractor teams in their quest to coordinate their work before construction. The biggest quality control issues that design teams and construction teams face include workmanship errors, delays in reporting data, failure to adequately document changes and complexity of designs, each of which can result in wasted time and resources. Higher-quality construction improves project efficiency; the better the processes and workflows, the easier it is for a job to move forward on schedule and without rework requirements.

The main culprit in all of these issues is miscommunication, or lack of communication, between teams. Making a construction total quality plan revolves around proactive communication and BIM streamlines that communication for the entire team.

How BIM Improves Quality Management and Collaboration

There are a number of ways using BIM improves quality management on a construction project:

1. The best defense against quality issues is an effective collaboration strategy to keep construction defects from occurring in the planning and design phases. Many BIM tools include standardized workflow checklists at the pre-construction phase—inspections, punch lists and daily walk-throughs are scheduled in collaboration with each other. When a project phase depends on the previous phase being completed first, mistakes simply can’t fall through the cracks. Collaboration recognizes the overlap in processes and relies on the open communication between trades on a job-site.
2. BIM models are updated quickly and efficiently throughout the construction process directly from the field. A collaborative allows communication barriers to be removed, and enables data to be coordinated in the cloud, online or offline. When a recurring error or defect is identified on one jobsite, immediate action can be taken to prevent duplicating it in other projects.
3. BIM is a collaboration format that doubles as a repository for all the construction data. It harnesses the potential to store all planning and design history, manages current documents and standards, and even predicts future outcomes of decisions. This existing data from a project can be stored for reference or analyzed for lessons learned, making negligent or recurring errors a thing of the past.

Total Quality Management Is High Controls in Specs in Range Control

At the end of the day, no construction project can be successful without clear, open communication, a well-coordinated BIM model and a collaborative process from start to finish. This means collaborating with members of the construction team, educating teams on standards, communicating inspection results and setting clear goals for tasks. BIM software streamlines the culture on a construction project, so that all stakeholders—no matter their role — can work together to ensure the quality and consistency of the end product.