Inspection and Other Strategies for Assuring Quality in Government Construction (1991)
Chapter: QUALITY MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
However, the goal of total quality management and the search for continuous improvement must penetrate all parts of the organization.
The committee further recommends all federal agencies adopt consistent quality definitions (Appendix B) and standardize, insofar as possible, agency practices, patterned after the Corps of Engineers.
EFFECTIVE INSPECTION
The resources available for inspection must be deployed effectively and will be most productive when all parties to the facilities development process accept the value and relevance of inspections. To assure this effective deployment and acceptance, agencies should develop integrated inspection plans for their construction projects. These plans, prepared jointly by the agencies and their design consultants, should be reviewed with the construction contractor and accepted prior to commencing construction, perhaps at the pre-bid conference, as part of the contract negotiations, and at the preconstruction conference. When the user agency and construction agency are different, both agencies should be involved in developing the plan.
The federal government as a whole is the nation's principal purchaser of construction services and can be a powerful force for advancing the state of the art in construction quality management. Agencies should fund the research and demonstration activities required to develop new inspection and other quality assurance technologies.
QUALITY MEASUREMENT SYSTEMS
Federal agencies should adopt systems for measuring their quality management efforts and relate these efforts to the costs associated with doing things over. The Construction Industry Institute's Quality Performance Management System provides
