Inspection and Other Strategies for Assuring Quality in Government Construction (1991)
Chapter: TEAMWORK AND QUALITY
Then-Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci stated the DoD's recognition of TOM in a 1988 memorandum. ". . . I am giving top priority to the DoD Total Quality Management (TQM) effort as the vehicle for attaining continuous quality improvement in our operations, and as a major strategy to meet the President's productivity objectives under Executive Order 12552." The committee believes that all federal agencies should implement TQM throughout the life cycle of their construction projects.
TEAMWORK AND QUALITY
One key aspect of TQM is teamwork, an integrated effort by all participants in the construction process to produce a quality building. A major conflict between current practice and TQM is the adversarial relationship among owners, designers, and constructors established by traditional inspection-based QA programs. This relationship—which can become especially severe if third-party professionals27 are responsible for QA inspections—has the unfortunate consequence that participants become concerned primarily with avoiding blame when construction documents, constructed facilities, and owner's needs are poorly matched. These participants then feel little incentive to anticipate, prevent, and help to resolve such disputes when these mismatches arise.
Greater teamwork for most government agencies would mean an increasing role in the construction phase for the architect or engineer who designed the project. Rather than viewing this increased role as a substitute for the agency's staff who traditionally have performed construction inspection on federal projects, the A/E and agency staff would complement one another, the former focusing on the project's technical
