Effectiveness_of_Qa_Implementation

take the opportunity to promote the implementation of QA. In Hong Kong construction industry, time usually is the greatest constraint for running a project which threaten or hinder the implementation of QA. For the content below, I will illustrate the effectiveness of QA implementation in Hong Kong construction industry by analyzing the following framework: 1) Setting quality objectives and standards, 2) Defining authority, delegation and responsibility / designing organization structure 3) Providing a coordination mechanism (committees and liaison person) 4) Providing a control mechanism Setting Quality Objective and Standards It is difficult to set quality standard and person within the project team usually have different attitudes towards quality. Lawrence & Lorsch have identified four types of differences in attitude and working style that arise among the various individuals and departments in organization. Difference goals and difference in formality of structure have rather great impact in construction project. In implementing quality, every parties should have the same attitude in placing quality in the first priority. However, in real situation, only a minority of person will concern quality as different post within a project team will have different goals. Take safety officer and environmental officer as an example, even they may participate in quality committee, will they take quality as their first priority of goal' The answer is definitely no as their fundamental job duty is not work for quality. So we can imagine how quality can be implemented effectively among people with 2 different attitude towards quality. Besides, difference in formality of structure makes the implementation of quality ineffective. It is because different participant within the project team or a project have different standard. For example workers and foreman can accept a greater extent of deviation but the quality engineer cannot. As such, it is rather essential to preset the quality standard of certain trade of work before the work commenced and to let workers know to which quality standard they need to preform. Quality Cards and Second Sample (terms used by CSHK) are the tools (Quality card is like the method statement of a trade of work, quality standard and inspection requirement is included in the quality card. Second sample is the sample made after the sample room in order to let workers know what product they should produced) used to preset the quality standard of works. However, it is quite difficult and time consuming to preset and quantified the quality standard of every trades of work. As a result, only certain trades of work like concreting, fixing reinforcement bars, formworking, plastering etc. will have quality cards. This confuse workers that not all trade of construction work need quality. On the other hand, different quality standard is required by different kind of project. Government organization like Architectural Services Department, Housing Department, Civil Engineering and Development Department usually demand high quality standard products while private project demand fair quality standard products usually. Does this mean that workers working in the private project cannot work for public project' Different standard and requirement in the construction industry also confuse workers in how they should perform their work. 3 Designing Organization Structure Matrix organization structure is usually adopted in main contractor company. Project team is formed by person come from different functional departments. In fact this will create problem for implementing QA for a particular project. As person within a team come from different functional department need to report to their top management in the functional departments in certain extend. For example the responsibilities of quantity surveryor is to measure work done, estimate variation order and to deal with sub-contracting work etc. within the project. In most case when they deal with sub-contracting certain trade of work, they would tend to choose sub-contractor with the lowest bidding price in order not to blamed by top management in their functional department. Once the lowest bidding price sub-contractor gets the contract and perform their work, they usually can’t come up with quality products by saying that they have not enough money to hire better workers and employed better materials or tools as their tendering price is too low to afford the aforesaid resources. In such a situation, quality will normally be sacrificed. Secondly, project manager is playing a leading role among different members in the project team. It is important for the project manager to direct the attention of different members to the common goals. However, will quality be the first priority of project manager' Most of the project managers in the construction industry do focus on time, cost, safety, environment and public concern. Project manager consider quality is just a tool to fulfill the satisfaction of customer. For building projects, quality is only important in finishing parts like tiling work, painting work etc. Quality of concreting work can be neglected 4 because it will be covered up by finishing work at later stage. Customers can only see the finishing part and so finishing trade need higher quality. I believe this is a normal situation we can find in local construction industry. If quality is not that important to the project manager, how the project manger can motive other team members. Providing a Coordination Mechanism Quality committee is formed to deal with inspection and as a kind of feedback system in CSHK. Different members in the project are required to join and participate in the quality committee and project manager is the chairperson of the committee. Frontline member like foreman is also presented in the committee, the function of the committee is mainly for regular site inspection work and discuss the findings and corrective and preventive action after inspection in regularly quality meeting. The idea behind for the participation of top management for inspection is used to demonstrate to the workers that quality is in great concern in the eyes of top management. A sense of fear will somehow generate within workers that top management will keep on eyes on how the work will be done. However, in real situation, top management usually cannot squeeze some time to participate in the inspection process as they have a lot of meetings and stuffs needed to be handled everyday. Even they do participate, they in fact don’t know much about the quality standard and only standing aside during the inspection process. Liaison person is another coordination mechanism used in CSHK. Liaison person is usually member with the post of project coordinator or site engineer who is more familiar with the daily operation and the working procedure in 5 construction site. As the job responsibilities for the liaison person is more related to the construction work, it is a more effective coordination mechanism if the person is being fully utilized. However, standing the side of liaison person, although their daily responsibilities are somehow related to quality of the works, it doesn’t mean that he was motivated to quality parts. Liaison person is responsible to report to top management any non-conformance work arised, they need to plan the regular inspection items for the committee, set the quality standard by writing the quality cards and also responsible for taking the leading role to let the frontline know the importance of quality. Let’s imagine if the aforesaid duties are not performed by a full time quality responsible position, will they have the incentive to performed well' As mentioned previously, job of liaison person usually take up by project coordinator or site engineer. They have their own works duties like design and drawing coordination with architect. As a result, working as liaison person is some kind a burden or extra work load imposed on them and hence no incentive for doing well. Providing a Control Mechanism It is especially important to have a close control and monitoring in construction industry. The characteristic of construction industry is that workers in the industry usually have low education level but full of experience. They usually reluctant to be controlled as they think that they are experienced workers and they are the best in performing particular task. Besides, construction work is complex in nature which involves a lot of trades and hence a lot of construction workers. The mobility of the workers is high, worker can work in construction site A today but work in construction site B tomorrow. It 6 means that the trained worker may go away easily and training may need to be performed in an on- going basis as everyday may have new workers. All the above characteristics make control to be the most difficult part in the quality management process. From the previous section, it is known that liaison person is responsible for writing quality card, ie forming quality standard. He is also responsible for explaining the quality card to the sub-contractor. However, workers are reluctant to follow the instruction in quality card as they think they have the experience to make quality work. In addition, liaison person usually have less experience than the workers, this makes workers can’t accept the instruction and advices given by liaison person. All these reasons make quality assurance difficult to be implemented in construction industry. No matters how difficult to implement the quality assurance, records like inspection record, non-conformance report, correction and preventive action record, quality meeting minutes, inspection schedule are still required to finish in order to satisfy the requirement of internal and external audits. And owing to the above mentioned reason like insufficient time for top management to participate in site inspection, difficult to persuade workers to follow quality cards will make quality assurance work to become some kind of paper work only. In order to fulfill the requirement, quality committee will just briefly conduct the site inspection work and fill in the inspection record and findings in later stage. In even worse case, some may even put down fake information into the records sheet when they have no time to conduct inspection. That is why quality assurance implementation is so called a window dressing exercises as actual performance may not be fully reflected by the bundle of forms and 7 records. Above all, main contractor want the ISO 9000 certificate in order to survive in the industry rather than they really willing to put quality in the first priority. In this commercial world, making profit is usually in the first priority as without profit, how the company could still operate. To conclude, it is no doubt that CSHK cannot represent the whole construction industry in Hong Kong. I believe other contractors in local construction industry are facing more or less the same situation as above stated. In addition, as the nature of construction industry is complex and dynamic, plenty of constraints like time, resources which made company to place cost and time in a higher priority. Together with the above reason stated, QA implementation becomes hardly more than a window dressing exercise in Hong Kong construction industry. Reference: 1) Report from National Housing Quality Program Research Centre , “ Making the Quality Connection Building Industry Roundtable” 2) BSI British Standards BS EN ISO 9001:2008 “Quality Management Systems-Requirements 3) Frank Harris and Ronald McCaffer, Modern Construction Management 4th edition 8