Building Education and Research

Jay Yang, Weilen P. Chang, Jay Yang, Weilen P. Chang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781135806903
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

Building Education and Research explores this new active area of research in a series of papers by internationally acclaimed experts, presented at the CIB W89 International Conference on Building Education and Research held in July 1998 (BEAR `98) in Brisbane, Australia. Sponsored in collaboratio jointly by the Queensland University of Technology, the Conseil International du Batiment (CIB) and the Australian Institute of Building (AIB), the conference was organised around the theme `Building Research and Education Beyond 2000' and looks at the factors that are changing the requirements of building education and research: economic and technological concerns; environmental concerns; government policies; Industries' demands; re-evaluation of community expectations.

Part One

PLANS AND STRATEGIES FOR THE FUTURE

A CUSTOMER FOCUSSED QUALITY MANAGEMENT CULTURE IN CONSTRUCTION EDUCATION

C.R. Janett¹

¹School of Construction, UNITEC Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

Everybody is a customer; we are customers. There is a case for fostering a form of transcended Quality Management culture in construction education and in the broader construction industry.

This paper, based on a literature review and on case study research examines Quality Management techniques and their focus on achieving satisfaction of the needs of the customer/user/client.

It is posited that to provide relevance in building education in the forthcoming years it is necessary to:

• focus on the “customers” of building construction in order to properly define the appropriate strategies for learning in the construction discipline. and

• establish that all participants (students, academics, constructors, end users) are customers, and

• empower graduates to identify with, and exercise appropriate interrogation of, their customers.

The tools offered by Quality Management to achieve these aims are assessed, and their relevance to the customer focussed culture are compared with the results of case study research on the role of the building client.

Keywords: Customers, Requirements, Interrogation, Tools, Graduates, Commitment

Introduction

This paper examines the notion of “Customer”, and explores the virtues and vices of teaching a Quality Management approach to managing projects in order to assist graduates to properly perform their activities in the design and construction environment.

Issues

J.E. Deming is quoted in Walton [1] as stating in the 1950s “Most dissatisfied customers just switch to somebody else. To your competitor.” Deming’s early work was directed to improving the manufacture of products, but, as has eventuated, his same principles laid the foundations for Quality Management methodology which has been progressively applied to nonmanufacturing processes, such as to the design of buildings and to construction activities on site. Initially such methodology was a largely mechanical quality assurance system, which ensured that the design process and/or construction activity had progressed through all relevant steps [2]—however it did not require any especial creativity to be applied to these processes, nor did it require interrogation of stated client needs or of presumed project processes.

Customers

Rather than perceiving the customer narrowly as the person who orders (and pays for) the service (whether the design or the construction of a building), Barrett [3] makes a strong case for looking at the customer in a wider sense which includes the problem owners (e.g. patients, surgeons, nurses, cleaners and visitors who will be the actual users in a proposed medical facility) and which he calls the “client system”. Kernohan et al [4] take an even broader approach by including owners, developers, consultants, authorities, investors, tenants, occupants, visitors, building managers, cleaners, other staff, maintenance personnel and general public as members of the client system. It follows that in the construction process all the participants are customers in some measure—whether adding to work already done by another operator on site, whether working with documentation/decisions produced by our graduates, or whether performing work which will be carried further by later processes in the contract. Thus further back in the ‘chain’, a materials manufacturer and supplier, a signwriter, or a regulatory authority inspector, are customers. Put in another way, it is contended that all participants are customers at some point in the process.

Contradiction

The significant problem for graduates/professionals in the design/construction arena is to define the customers’ needs (client requirements in the widest sense) and to satisfy them. This is a significant problem because the client may only superficially communicate his/her requirements to, for instance, the architect of a proposed building. But other needs are often only discerned by two way discussion with, and feedback from the client/customer. Such needs are not always clearly articulated by clients without some form of prompting. Barrett [5] argues that there is often information (which may be functional or emotional) which a client does not disclose, whether purposefully or not, and there can be too an unknown area of needs which is not known to either client, architect, or constructor.

We have on the one hand then, the search for a technique to assist the elucidation of customer requirements (including physical, procedural, emotional, visual, financial, and so on) in order to provide a thoroughly satisfactory result for the customer; but on the other hand this presents the contradiction expressed by Blau [6] in her classic analysis of the practising architectural profession, which is that those who faithfully serve their clients’ wishes and commercial interests very often abdicate the very creative independence and personal convictions for which the client in part engaged them. In just the same way it is conceivable for those of us involved in education in construction management that we can run risk of suppressing spontaneity and innovation, while slavishly promoting systematic Quality Management processes in our learning systems.

Definitions and Tools

Let us look at some definitions. AS/NZS 3905.2:1993 [7] defmes quality as “the totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs”. Note that it is not used to express the achievement of comparative excellence. Further, Quality Management is defined effectively as (author’s paraphrasing) [8] “the way in which one operates so that your intention to achieve the correct quality is realised”.

For the design and construction industries (and by implication the education institutions which serve these disciplines) the early 1990s saw the development of Total Quality Management which put the Quality Management concept into a more holistic approach and enunciated tools to assist the analytical process. Munro-Faure [9] gives a timely reminder that any enterprise can only succeed if it produces output which conforms to its clients’ expectations. In similar vein Drucker is quoted in Christopher et al [10] as stating that “the client keeps the firm in existence”.

Our enterprises can only succeed so long as client expectations are properly identified, and so long as there are processes which allow these expectations to be fulfilled. Therefore as educators we must either identify our students’ reasonable expectations or if no especial expectations are to be found, then we need to equip them with tools to identify both their full range of eventual “customers”, and those customers’ expectations/needs. In this respect Total Quality Management places an emphasis on fostering the adoption of individual responsibility [11] and provides techniques to assist the analysis of problems and processes such as the use of flow diagrams and Pareto charts.

But most of these “tools” are useful for pinpointing waste, and for getting one’s firm to operate in the most profitable manner. Notwithstanding the importance of these, they are not entirely tools to assist either us as educators or our graduates in the design and construction fields to identify and analyse who our clients really are and what their real needs are, nor to impassion us with the fervour needed to interpret the total client system.

Case Studies

Six case studies were carried out by the author as part of a research project focussed on the relationship between clients and architects [12]. These were carried out as qualitative studies because the participants (clients) to be researched were not seen as objects with given properties or qualities which can be readily measured, but rather as participants whose frame of reference and perceptions require investigation and exploration. Standardised quantitative techniques were seen as less suitable than a holistic qualitative approach as the studies were concerned with interaction and relationships. A major thrust of the enquiry was to investigate the client-architect relationship particularly from the clients’ point of view. Were clients identified by their architects as the “customer”; were their needs thoroughly ascertained at the briefing stage; and were their overt requirements interrogated to reveal undisclosed, or indeed unnecessary needs? At the same time six hypotheses emerged as the study developed.

This paper stresses just one of the hypotheses and observes the degree of pattern match between it and the behaviour pattern that was evident in each case. Refer to Yin [13] for an exhaustive guide on the strategy of comparing a predicted pattern as illustrated in an hypothesis with the pattern evident in a particular case study. The hypothesis posited that open-mindedness and flexibility on the part of the architect are necessary ingredients to the quality of a sound professional relationship with the client, but so too is the ability to interrogate the client’s wishes. particularly in the context of ethical, environmental, and legal considerations, so that the boundaries of a problem are “pushed” and all options are explored.

Cuff [14] and Sternberg [15] usefully traverse the paradoxical relationship between flexibility and integrity, and between creativity and the observance of controls, limits and restraints (whether imposed by customers, budgets or authorities). This apparent contradiction between the desire (whether by a teacher, a graduate or a seasoned professional) to ascertain the customer’s needs and to satisfy them by a rigorous, systematic process, and the desire of the client to engage you for your very creativity, or managerial skill or flair has already been touched upon. The observation by Sternberg [16] that “…the truly creative is that which cannot be taught, but it cannot come from the untaught” offers the very valid suggestion that a well trained, well prepared teacher/graduate/professional needs the ability to recombine learned elements and methods into new configurations for what is required now. This can apply in the teaching field as much as in the construction management and the architectural design field.

How, then, did the practitioners in the six case studies identify their “customers” and their requirements, and were these requirements satisfactorily interrogated? Were clients receptive to such probing? Did Quality Management techniques feature in the process?

Case 1

The client was the general manager of a property development company predominantly involved in large retail development. He was an experienced operator with tertiary qualifications in quantity surveying and construction management including a masters degree.

The client observed that the architect tended to be too solution oriented rather than problem oriented, and had tended to skimp on analysing requirements, and tended to hurry towards design solutions too early in the process. The client actively encouraged the architect to seek out “what made the client tick” and to explore and interrogate the brief at the start of the project. The identification of customer requirements was not well carried out; and despite the client’s preparedness the architect did not actively question the client’s requirements. Formal Quality Management techniques were not utilised. The professional skills and the personality of the architect, and the resultant quality of relationship, were of value to the client, and counteracted the client’s wish for greater problem exploration.

Case2

The client was a property development manager for a large insurance company, and was responsible for arranging the construction of substantial investment buildings. He was an experienced operator who had built up his skills in pragmatic fashion over a number of years.

The paradox between the client wishing the professional to ascertain and interrogate the client’s real needs (and to keep on budget), and actively encouraging the professional to put their “imprint” on the project was very evident in this case. This ambiguity was managed by the client selecting at the ou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Keynote Addresses
• Part One: Plans and Strategies for the Future
• Part Two: Internationalisation
• Part Three: Innovative Teaching
• Part Four: Continuing Education and Re-education
• Author Index
• Subject Index