HKSQ Seminar on Evolving Construction Quality Management in Practice

A seminar named “Evolving Construction Quality Management in Practice” was co-organized Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) and SEEM Dept., CityU on 26^th April 2019.  The construction industry has been criticized for poor quality in the recent incidents and scandals in railway projects. Defective works, poor workmanship, mistakes and human errors are critical construction quality problems that can definitely lead to a project failure. This seminar aimed to explain the principles and practices of construction quality management and to discuss the hints on evolving construction quality in projects. Some applications for using inspection tracking processes and digital checklist inspections for improving work quality & productivity would be demonstrated.  In the beginning, I introduced two speakers to participants.  Dr. Sammy Wan is also HKSQ members who supported and joined ANQ with us for many years.  Mr. Stephen Au brought IT into traditional construction industry for enhancing quality practice.

Dr. Sammy Wan (Head of Quality, Safety and Environment of ATAL Engineering Group; Past President, IISE-HK Chapter) was the first speaker and his topic entitled “Evolving Construction Quality Management in Practice”.  In the beginning, he reviewed construction industry with low efficiency compared to other industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, wholesale and retail, etc. (The Economist) Financial returns for contractors are often relatively low and volatile.

In Dr. Wan’s research (Wan, 2010), he revealed that ‘poor coordination of processes/trades’ and ‘design changes/error’ were critical causes. Then he introduced Quality Thinking in Construction.  He explained conventional project fails because of schedule to push for work, change in design frequently, miscommunication between main contractor and sub-contractor, etc.  

And then Dr. Wan explained the dynamic analysis on project failure that come from schedule pressure, hidden upstream problem and poor downstream work quality.  ‘Fire-fighting’ attitude increased workloads by employing incompetent and inexperience multi-layered workers with less familiarity with project to maintain milestones.  Moreover, management may try to avoid rework on problematic tasks by modifying design and specification.  

After that Dr. Wan introduced an Evolving Construction Quality that early involvement of stakeholders to evaluate alternatives and refine the design in early stage.  So that we had good design quality planning and exchanging construction specific information early and ‘freeze’ design solution in collaborative design process for alignment of scope.  Building Information Model (BIM) could provide a virtual environment prior to building it physically, simulate and analyze potential impacts to prevent rework, design error, conflicting dimensioning and direction.  Dr. Wan said Quality Planning identified the standards the project needed to comply and introduced Quality Incident Rate (as KPI). However, only safety had incident rate in construction field at this moment.

Finally, Dr. Wan mentioned the Planning Inspection in a proactive manner.  Proactive quality control identified potential trouble spots ahead of time and put in place process to check those spots before moving to downstream.  Moreover, centralized digital document management system maintained the up-to-date set of plans and drawings.  Lastly, he concluded that involvement of all levels of stakeholders at relevant stages and their contribution in early design, buildability, design quality planning, collaborative planning and pre-task planning were essential.

Mr. Stephen Au (Managing Director & Founder, MTECH Engineering Limited) was the second speaker and his topic named “Close Loop of TQM for Construction Industry”. 

Firstly, Mr. Au introduced BIM which had been defined as “a digital representation or visualization of physical and functional characteristics of a facility”.  It could share knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle from inception onward.

Then he showed some projects employed BIM including E&M Installation, Nanfung GZ Convention Center, New World Center in Shenyang, etc.

After that he briefed the Closed Loop TQM from design to construction using PDCA cycle.   

Lastly, he demonstrated the app using BIM and VR to identify the door material.

Q&A

I represented HKSQ gave souvenir to Dr. Sammy Wan.

I represented HKSQ gave souvenir to Mr. Stephen Au.

Before the seminar, we held Extra General Meeting (EGM) to approve the audited financial report 2017/18 and add two past chairmen for cheque signatory.

At the end HKSQ exco members had dinner with guest speakers in CityU.

Reference:

HKSQ - www.hksq.org

SEEM, CityU - http://www.cityu.edu.hk/seem/

20161007: HKIE Seminar on ISO Document Management System for Architecture, Engineering & Construction - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2016/10/kie-seminar-on-iso-document-management.html