CHOP 5.4 - QUALITY MANAGEMENT Flashcards
Product vs. Service
Architectural practice is a knowledge-creating endeavor that is delivered through (a service). Although architectural services usually contribute to the construction of a building (a product).
Within the context of the design project itself, the deliverables, drawings, specifications or renderings are a “product.” The “service” includes consultation, managing stakeholder engagement, coordination of the design, conducting field reviews, and the other activities involved in delivering architectural services.
Definitions of Quality
Quality:
- provides value to clients
- facilitates doing the right things — right the first time, on time, all the time and to the client’s satisfaction
- satisfies fitness for purpose (offering solutions that fit the purpose)
- provides service which consistently meets or exceeds performance levels required by the client.
Terminology
- Quality Management
- Quality Planning
- Quality Assurance
- Quality Control
Quality Management
Quality management refers to what an architectural practice does to manage its processes and activities (the architectural services it delivers). Quality management is a systematic way of achieving quality at every stage of a process to ensure that the client’s requirements are met on time and all the time.
Quality Planning
Quality planning refers to determining the quality standards that are relevant for a project and how to put those standards in place so that requirements will be met. Quality standards have four main contributors, which can be individually and collectively integrated:
1) The core services: provincial and territorial architect acts and regulations; building codes; special codes and standards referenced by building codes, such as product standards.
2) The collaborators: clients and client-consultant agreements; contractors and client-contractor agreements; communities where a project is located, including local zoning and building by-laws.
3) The contexts: building type and functional program; climate in the location of the project; complexity of a project;
schedule, e.g., traditional design-bid-build, fast-track, etc.
4) The concepts: traditional project delivery tools and methods; integrated design process (IDP); integrated project delivery (IPD); building information modeling (BIM) usage.
Quality Assurance
planned and systematic activities arising from quality planning, implemented to fulfil requirements for quality.
For example, an architect’s audit of how well the firm’s coordination activities are completed through reviewing the causes of construction phase change orders is “quality assurance.
Quality Control
In architecture, quality control is the process of reviewing the work of any phase of services to verify it is consistent with established design and construction standards.
For example, The coordination of a complete set of tender documents is “quality control.”
Quality Management Systems in Architectural Practice
No matter how the practice is organized, ensuring the provision of quality architectural services requires that several strategic and administrative functions must be in place, including:
1) a committed leadership
2) a mission statement and possibly also a “quality” statement
3) a clear organizational structure
4) a staffing plan and opportunities for professional development and empowerment
5) office policies and procedures, and document and data filing and retrieval systems
Quality Management Systems for the Project
This includes thorough project planning to ensure that services are delivered on time, accurately and within budget. The current state and decreasing costs of technology available to architectural practices enable the efficient creation of project quality management systems.
Work Plan
A work plan is a comprehensive list of the steps required to plan and execute a project.
1) Master/specific – Rather than developing a work plan for each and every project, a practice develops and maintains a master work plan that includes those steps required by regulation and best practice
2) Instructional – Each step in the work plan should include the practice’s work instructions for the execution of the task.
3) Diarized – In our increasingly “real time” work environment, it becomes important for staff to record progress on sometimes complex tasks.
4) Actionable – Many project steps, e.g., respond to RFI, issue proposed change, etc.
Actions
As noted above, certain steps in design and construction often involve the use of pre-formatted “standard” documents or forms, which may be required only once or many times during a project.
Examples include:
- Meeting Minutes
- Design reports
- Design reviews
- RDI’s and their responses
…
Checklists
As differentiated from work plans and actions, checklists are logically formulated lists that describe the ordered execution requirements for an element of service, or for the contractor, an element of construction.
Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Quality Management
Building information modeling (BIM) is beginning to radically change quality management processes across the design-construction-operation supply chain.
