The construction industry has arrived late to TQM, probably due to the tendency to easily brushaside anything in management that is new, or to dismiss TQM as a fad.
Continuous improvement is not a fad but a necessary part of management’s obligation to properly run its company. Gone are the boom days when quality did not matter due to the volume of work available and the ease of obtaining work. The attitude of construction managersand contractors was simply to add it to the bill, because the owner will pay for it. In other words, in those boom days Cost plus Profit equaled Price.
Now, however, the new attitude isPrice minus Cost equals Profit. Owners are now demanding higher quality work, and at a lowercost. In attempting to keep pace with the new attitude, a quality management system that helps keep costs down is well worth implementing.
The characteristics that are common to companies that successfully implement TQM in their
daily operations are listed here.
♦Strive for owner/customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction
♦Strive for accident-free jobsites
♦Recognize that the owner/customer provides the revenue while the employees are
responsible for the profit
♦Recognize the need for measurement and fact-based decision making
♦Arrange for employees to become involved in helping the company improve
♦Train extensively
♦Work hard at improving communication inside and outside the company
♦Use teams of employees to improve processes
♦Place a strong emphasis on the right kind of leadership, and provide supervisors with a
significant amount of leadership training
♦Involve subcontractors and suppliers, requiring them to adopt TQM
♦Strive for continuous improvement
Quality principles that successful TQM companies recognize
The quality principles that successful TQM companies recognize and attempt to continually
incorporate into their actions are the following:
♦People will produce quality goods and services when the meaning of quality is expressed
daily in their relations with their work, colleagues, and organization.
♦Inspection of the process is as important as inspection of the product. Quality improvement
can be achieved by the workers closest to the process.
♦Each system with a certain degree of complexity has a probability of variation, which can
be understood by scientific methods.
♦Workers work in the system to improve the system; managers work on the system to
improve the system.
♦Total quality management is a strategic choice made by top management, and must be
consistently translated into guidelines provided to the whole organization.
♦Envision what you desire to be as an organization, but start working from where you
actually are.
♦Studies have indicated that people like working on a quality-managed jobsite especially due
to the cleaner site and safer place to work.
♦Accept the responsibility for quality. Establish datums for measurement.
♦Use the principle of get it right, the first time, every time.
♦Understand that quality is a journey, not a destination. It consists of steps that form a
process that is continuous.
The goal of management is to create a culture of quality across the entire project site--get the job done right, the first time,
every time. As in the airline industry where 99-percent quality is not good enough, the construction industry also needs to strive for 100-percent quality. Today, the number of contractors being considered for projects by some owners is growing smaller, and only those contractors who can produce quality work are being asked to bid by these owners.
Every effort to incorporate the above principles into the company’s actions will further qualityproduction.himself or herself as aquality inspector of hisor her task
Each worker becomes his or her own quality inspector. In efforts to increase productivity andlower costs, each worker becoming a quality inspector is vital.
Continuous improvement is not a fad but a necessary part of management’s obligation to properly run its company. Gone are the boom days when quality did not matter due to the volume of work available and the ease of obtaining work. The attitude of construction managersand contractors was simply to add it to the bill, because the owner will pay for it. In other words, in those boom days Cost plus Profit equaled Price.
Now, however, the new attitude isPrice minus Cost equals Profit. Owners are now demanding higher quality work, and at a lowercost. In attempting to keep pace with the new attitude, a quality management system that helps keep costs down is well worth implementing.
The characteristics that are common to companies that successfully implement TQM in their
daily operations are listed here.
♦Strive for owner/customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction
♦Strive for accident-free jobsites
♦Recognize that the owner/customer provides the revenue while the employees are
responsible for the profit
♦Recognize the need for measurement and fact-based decision making
♦Arrange for employees to become involved in helping the company improve
♦Train extensively
♦Work hard at improving communication inside and outside the company
♦Use teams of employees to improve processes
♦Place a strong emphasis on the right kind of leadership, and provide supervisors with a
significant amount of leadership training
♦Involve subcontractors and suppliers, requiring them to adopt TQM
♦Strive for continuous improvement
Quality principles that successful TQM companies recognize
The quality principles that successful TQM companies recognize and attempt to continually
incorporate into their actions are the following:
♦People will produce quality goods and services when the meaning of quality is expressed
daily in their relations with their work, colleagues, and organization.
♦Inspection of the process is as important as inspection of the product. Quality improvement
can be achieved by the workers closest to the process.
♦Each system with a certain degree of complexity has a probability of variation, which can
be understood by scientific methods.
♦Workers work in the system to improve the system; managers work on the system to
improve the system.
♦Total quality management is a strategic choice made by top management, and must be
consistently translated into guidelines provided to the whole organization.
♦Envision what you desire to be as an organization, but start working from where you
actually are.
♦Studies have indicated that people like working on a quality-managed jobsite especially due
to the cleaner site and safer place to work.
♦Accept the responsibility for quality. Establish datums for measurement.
♦Use the principle of get it right, the first time, every time.
♦Understand that quality is a journey, not a destination. It consists of steps that form a
process that is continuous.
The goal of management is to create a culture of quality across the entire project site--get the job done right, the first time,
every time. As in the airline industry where 99-percent quality is not good enough, the construction industry also needs to strive for 100-percent quality. Today, the number of contractors being considered for projects by some owners is growing smaller, and only those contractors who can produce quality work are being asked to bid by these owners.
Every effort to incorporate the above principles into the company’s actions will further qualityproduction.himself or herself as aquality inspector of hisor her task
Each worker becomes his or her own quality inspector. In efforts to increase productivity andlower costs, each worker becoming a quality inspector is vital.