Total Quality in the Construction Supply Chain

John S Oakland, Marton Marosszeky, John Oakland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• eBook ISBN: 9781136354328
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Organizations in the construction industry struggle with three key issues: quality management or better meeting customer expectations, supply chain management or more effectively working with suppliers to provide a seamless service to customers, and knowledge management, the challenge of learning between collaborating organisations and between people working on similar projects around the world. Excellence in these key aspects of business is the hallmark of great companies. This book tackles each of these themes, demonstrating their significance as strategic concepts for the construction sector and illustrating how development goals in each of the areas can be met. To be successful Total Quality has to impact on the organisation's Performance, which should be measured on a "balanced scorecard", including the results from the customer. This can be achieved through good Planning and improvements in Processes through involvement of the People. These 4Ps combine with the 4Cs – Customer, Culture, Communication and Commitment to provide a model for implementing total quality into construction. The book brings together, within this consistent theoretical framework, international case studies from all areas of the construction industry. These include examples as diverse as quarrying, construction, design, real estate, land development and regulatory agencies, drawn from the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore Australia and Japan. Through these the authors demonstrate how a total quality or business excellence strategy can be applied in all activities in the construction supply chain to achieve world-class performance. Written by two of the world's leading experts, in a logical and very practical style, Total Quality in the Construction Supply Chain offers students and others new to the subject a clearly structured introduction to the concept of quality in the industry, while offering help and guidance to the most experienced professionals. The book should also appeal to people from all areas of the building and construction sector in any country.

1

Understanding quality

Quality, competitiveness and customers
Understanding and building the quality chains
Managing quality
Quality starts with understanding the needs
Quality in all functions
Reference

Quality, competitiveness and customers

Over the past 25 years, professionals in construction have watched industry leaders in other sectors effectively implement quality-based philosophies to transform their enterprises into market leaders. Yet, in this sector, most companies have struggled to fully understand what the quality movement can offer it. Since the mid-1980s a few leading construction industry organizations around the world have demonstrated how to solve this riddle. This book presents their experiences in the form of a series of case studies in the context of a comprehensive framework for total quality management.

The construction industry does have a number of specific issues which create difficulties for the sector. The first of these is the extreme fragmentation of supply chains and the short-term nature of relationships within them. Relationships between head contractors and subcontractors are essentially project based, although in the past decade lead suppliers have started to take a longer-term view of some of their key relationships. A second factor is the long timeframe of procurement. For large projects, conception to completion often takes years and, within this time, many of the individuals involved in the process will change, making continuity a challenge. The final and most profoundly limiting issue is the unilateral definition of quality – the concept is usually regarded almost entirely in product terms. The building process – a collaboration between numerous suppliers from the early design stage to completion of construction – is not owned by any one party; rather, it is achieved through the negotiations of the many players whose predominant focus is the product. It is as if the ‘process’ was incidental and, yet, it is the industry's processes which determine key outcomes. The difficulties that exist within these process are remarkably similar the world over.

Safety – construction is one of the most hazardous industries – its accident record is third behind mining and forestry. New legislation has now made head contractors, designers and project managers more responsible and potentially liable for injuries incurred by workers on a site, regardless of who had employed them.

Quality – research has shown that the cost of rectifying quality errors during and after the contract is of the same order as the profitability of organizations in the sector. Product quality problems are reflected in leaking buildings and premature deterioration of external finishes.¹

Reliability – on most project sites, only two out of three tasks planned one week out are actually completed according to plan. This reflects that while individual contractors within the supply chain struggle to maintain focus on their own profitability the overall process is highly unreliable.

Ineffective decision-making – design often takes longer than anticipated and early budgets are rarely accurate. This reflects that the gap between design and construction is too wide and that the design decision-making process is not effective, this includes the decision-making role of clients.

Against this backdrop of complexity and poor performance, contractors and consultants both claim that their profit margins are very low. The emergence of very large global organizations in real estate, material supply, general contracting and specialist contracting, in engineering design and, to a lesser extent, in architecture during the past two decades has led to rapid restructuring in some sections of the industry.

Whatever the type of organization, whether it is an engineering or architectural design practice, a developer, a contractor, a building product manufacturer or a project manager – competition is rife: competition for end customers, for employees, for projects and for funds. Any organization basically competes on its reputation – for quality, reliability, price and delivery – and most people now recognize that quality is the most important of these competitive weapons. If you doubt that, just look at the way some organizations, even whole industries in certain countries, have used quality to take the heads off their competitors. American, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Swiss, Swedish organizations, and organizations from other countries, have used quality strategically to win customers, steal business resources or funding, and be competitive. Moreover, this sort of attention to quality improves performance in reliability, delivery, and price.

For any organization, there are several aspects of reputation which are important:

1. It is built upon the competitive elements of quality, reliability, delivery, and price, of which quality has become strategically the most important.

2. Once an organization acquires a poor reputation for quality, it takes a very long time to change it.

3. Reputations, good or bad, can quickly become national reputations.

4. The management of the competitive weapons, such as quality, can be learned like any other skill, and used to turnaround a poor reputation, in time.

Before anyone will buy the idea that quality is an important consideration, they would have to know what was meant by it.

What is quality?

‘Is this a quality watch?’ Pointing to my wrist, I ask this question of a class of students – undergraduates, postgraduates, experienced managers – it matters not who. The answers vary:

‘No, it's made in Japan.’

‘No, it's cheap.’

‘No, the face is scratched.’

‘How reliable is it?’

‘I wouldn't wear it.’

My watch has been insulted all over the world – London, New York, Paris, Sydney, Brussels, Amsterdam, Leeds! Clearly, the quality of a watch depends on what the wearer requires from a watch – perhaps a piece of jewellery to give an impression of wealth; a timepiece that gives the required data, including the date, in digital form; or one with the ability to perform at 50 metres under the sea? These requirements determine the quality.

Quality is often used to signify ‘excellence’ of a product or service – people talk about ‘Rolls-Royce quality’ and ‘top quality’. In building, the different standards of finish specified for plasterwork depend on the location and lighting of the surface. Concrete can be manufactured to have low shrinkage and highly impervious characteristics to ensure that it performs well in a harsh environment. In some manufacturing companies the word may be used to indicate that a piece of material or equipment conforms to certain physical dimensional characteristics often set down in the form of a particularly ‘tight’ specification. In a hospital it might be used to indicate some sort of ‘professionalism’. If we are to define quality in a way that is useful in its management, then we must recognize the need to include in the assessment of quality the true requirements of the ‘customer’ – the needs and expectations.

Quality then is simply meeting the customer requirements, and this has been expressed in many ways by other authors:

‘Fitness for purpose or use’ – Juran, an early doyen of quality management.

‘The totality of features and characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs’ – BS 4778: 1987 (ISO 8402, 1986) Quality Vocabulary: Part 1, International Terms.

‘Quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, present and future’ – Deming, another early doyen of quality management.

‘The total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacture and maintenance through which the product and service in use will meet the expectation by the customer’ – Feigenbaum, the first man to publicize a book with ‘Total Quality’ in the title.

‘Conformance to requirements’ – Crosby, an American consultant famous in the 1980s.

‘Degree to which a set ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Understanding quality
• 2 Models and frameworks for total quality management
• 3 Leadership and commitment
• 4 Policy, strategy and goal deployment
• 5 Partnerships and resources
• 6 Design for quality
• 7 Performance measurement frameworks
• 8 Self-assessment audits and reviews
• 9 Benchmarking
• 10 Process management
• 11 Process redesign
• 12 Quality management systems
• 13 Continuous improvement
• 14 Human resource management
• 15 Culture change through teamwork
• 16 Communications, innovation and learning
• 17 Implementing TQM
• Case studies
• Bibliography
• Index