Construction quality assurance (QA) is the plan, documentation, and procedures set before construction starts to prevent defects in design and workmanship. Quality control (QC) is the inspection and testing during the build that checks the work against that plan. Projects that skip QA pay for it in schedule, cost, and liability.
What Is the Difference Between Quality Assurance and Quality Control?
When you hear the term “construction quality assurance,” what comes to mind? If you’re thinking “quality control,” you’re not alone. In truth, however, quality assurance (QA) proactively establishes a plan — including required documentation and procedures — for preventing mistakes in design and workmanship and occurs before the build starts. Quality control (QC) verifies that everything meets the standards outlined within the QA and corrects any flaws that are discovered. Consider them to be complementary routes to the same destination; QA plans how to get there, while QC verifies that you will get there.
Why Is Quality Assurance Important?
Prevents Costly Mistakes Before They Happen
It’s been said that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Even though risk is part of the territory when it comes to construction projects, QA helps mitigate it from the beginning, becoming an indirect part of an overall risk-management strategy. Taking time to prevent an error from happening in the first place is preferable to scrambling to fix costly consequences in terms of budget, schedule, reputation and future business opportunities.
Sets Design, Material and Supplier Standards
Construction quality assurance ensures the project meets design and structural standards while also meeting owner project requirements. This includes everything from the project design itself to the necessary skill sets of the people who are drawing up and engineering the project. And it also outlines the specific materials to be used that adhere to those standards for structural integrity, along with the qualifications of the suppliers that can provide them.
Defines Testing, Code Compliance and Inspections
QA establishes the process and methods that will be used for the testing of materials and systems, ensuring compliance with building codes, and meeting inspection requirements throughout the build. These are like the guardrails of a construction project, the parameters within which the build must operate to satisfy these documentation requirements.
Extends to Crew Training and Site Safety
QA isn’t limited to just the project at hand; it applies to the construction companies as well. How a building is constructed is just as important as the process used to build it. Anyone who is out in the field performing the actual work, operating equipment or handling materials should undergo appropriate safety training. That applies to anything related to job site safety, properly donning personal protective equipment, and inspection of equipment for damage or necessary repairs before resuming use, for example. Safe construction site practices lead to safer structures — and fewer OSHA violations.
Carries Through to Building Commissioning
You might consider building commissioning to be a type of quality assurance, one that focuses on ensuring the functionality of the systems and equipment within a structure before handoff. When applying the ongoing quality assurance principle of defect prevention to the commissioning process, it goes a long way toward keeping your end-of-project punch list as short as possible. Longer term, it can reduce the likelihood of building owners calling the contractor back for repair of a faulty system down the road.
What Are the Risks of Not Having a Construction Quality Assurance Process?
Schedule Delays
When you don’t have a solid QA plan to work against, it can contribute to time-consuming corrective actions, a frequent cause for schedule delays. How do you remedy something as common as this? The most effective way is to provide site crews with timely information that helps them do their job better. That could range from material safety data sheets to change orders to blueprint updates. Sounds like a simple fix, yet lack of communication is one of the biggest complaints within the industry. Ensuring everyone has what they need, when they need it, is a critical part of any QA process so timeline milestones are met.
Extra Costs and Rework
Small mistakes can often surface throughout the build. Often, however, they won’t be detrimental to the owner’s plans to put the building into full use. But there are still repair costs, from hard materials and their delivery to additional labor. And those costs can really add up if they happen to be from an inadvertently replicated issue throughout the structure. Imagine the impact that could have on more sizable projects. In addition, more serious flaws found during the defect-liability period (after practical completion is reached) can lead to frustrating rework. On top of the associated costs absorbed by the contractor, it may have a ripple effect of delaying any retention payments due to them.
Injury and Liability
The worst-case scenario is system or equipment failure months or years later. Whether it’s the result of a faulty or nonexistent QA procedure, or an insufficient commissioning process, it can lead to potential injury and costly damage claims and litigation down the road.
Why Is Quality Assurance Less Common Than Quality Control?
If QA is such a crucial part of any project, why is it less commonly practiced than QC? The main reason is that construction quality assurance has typically been a manual process. It’s time-consuming, often paper-based, and involves copious amounts of documentation. Thankfully, there is a better way to go. Digitizing the QA process not only can alleviate the paper chase but markedly increase communication and efficiencies for all involved stakeholders.
Digitizing can increase workflow productivity and bring order to this complex yet necessary process. InEight Completions gives project teams a single source of truth for quality management. Inspections, test plans and checklists are created and tracked in one place, the software tracks who must sign off, and test forms, equipment, issues and documents are linked automatically, so the records are ready when it’s time to build the turnover package.
