Every contractor and construction business aims to offer the best quality services, but many hindrances can pop up along the way to hinder these plans. A single error can trigger a series of events that can lead to costly rework and more severe penalties if the structure's protection is compromised.
Drafting a plan is one of the initial aspects of workforce planning when it comes to construction quality control. Practical and strategic construction quality control requires that general contractors make an effort to put the right people to the suitable projects together while ensuring that workforce planning is in sync with the organization's objectives.
Improving construction quality control administration starts with understanding the factors that can impact both safety and quality. Read ahead to find out the things you never knew before about construction quality control.
1. Damaged And Low-Quality Resources
Excess water or sand in a concrete mix, logs of woodcut from stunted trees, and poorly graded steel can result in extensive construction quality issues. If these resources fail beforehand, they also create construction safety dangers by responding unpredictably during the building process. According to the UK Construction Blog and the impact on the design and construction sector, Workers are often injured when sparks are generated during the cutting process or as a structure collapses due to a lack of weight-bearing strength. Placing orders only from trusted suppliers and appointing a quality control officer to monitor every shipment of materials is the only way to check if a project has effectiveness and adequate quality.
2. Miscommunication Between Supplier And Vendor
Difficulties with suppliers and vendors can increase expenses and lower quality levels. Substituting the requested building supplies with other brands and resources that do not offer the same quality can result in unhappy customers and time-consuming rework demands.
Set clear objectives with all suppliers and perform random inspections to confirm if they are still adhering to the contract. Finding new vendors may feel like a disturbance in the middle of a construction project, but it can significantly improve construction quality control and management.
3. Subcontractor Mismanagement
Some researchers say that over half of construction faults can be attributed to workforce error. If a subcontractor hires employees without the appropriate skills and neglects to train them, quality faults occur that can go unattended for years.
Screening subcontractors and other labor providers must verify if they are supplying skilled laborers who can recognize their mistakes. However, construction businesses and project managers shall follow up with independent audits of subcontractor performance to detect any problems before it's too late.
4. Importance Of Documenting Changes And Practices
Some quality problems are not related to a mistake but lack documentation. If resources are substituted with another having distinctive maintenance and replacement cycle, negligence to update the final documents may result in inappropriate handling from the maintenance team.
Practice a digital file management method as it simplifies updating project documentation so that there is no reason to delay updates.
5. End-Minute Modifications
When highlights are still being engineered or discussed at late stages in the construction process, these end-minute changes often point to serious quality issues.
Hence set deadlines by which you cannot alter plans any further, make arrangements to extend the deadlines, and set aside plenty of time to check and test any changes to the existing designs.
6. Project Scope
Construction projects often start much smaller than their results. So how does a primary bridge or retail center turn into a multi-lane expressway or a three-story mall? This kind of unplanned development is often referred to as scope creep.
While it is normal for all projects to change with time as per the then costs, time constraints, and site conditions, the dilemma comes when the expansion in scope leads to cutting corners of limited budget and period. Managing the scope of a construction project assures the contractors to sustain the same quality level for the work.
7. Facilitate Proper Communication Among Workers
It is observed that project managers feel that communication problems are the primary cause of quality issues. Miscommunication leads to the misapplication of techniques and unsuitable resources. This, in turn, shows a lack of secondary and tertiary testing to identify existing problems.
Using a comprehensive tool for increasing communication between various teams working together on a single construction project is ideal.
8. Complication Of Designs
Unnecessary complexity is the rival of high-quality output. While some level of complexity is inevitable in cutting-edge infrastructure and industrial construction projects, designers should lessen complex techniques and unusual features whenever feasible.
Uncomplicated designs are also more affordable, offering the construction business a better profit margin while providing the highest quality work.
9. Absence of Project Management Structure
A project management system defines the ideal intervals for testing the work accomplished so far for inaccuracies and omissions. Without a management plan for quality check and assurance, most construction businesses wait far too long to perform essential checks on their work. Realizing a project management system - based around mobile apps - is a flexible and fast way to bring current projects under control.
10. Overlooked Audits And Testing
Some construction businesses stick rigidly to their third-party testing and auditing plans yet overlook the results of the tests and continue with flawed objects or existing quality issues. Due to a lack of proper classification for quality control, it is causing financial reports to bounce from the project in-charge to lead engineers without a transparent workflow for addressing the resources.
Determine who is accountable for reading the audit and test reports and giving suggestions for adjustments to the contractors so that critical information on quality matters is not overlooked.
Inference
Effective workforce planning for construction quality control should focus on any contractor to maximize their workforce productivity and performance. It is a process that includes incorporating all relevant information to facilitate strategic, data-driven decision-making to reach organizational objectives.
Construction quality control is a challenge. Nevertheless, with the use of construction workforce scheduling software, general contractors can automate many of the manual processes involved, avoid typical workforce planning mistakes, set intelligent objectives, and stay ahead of their workforce strategy to gain operational leverage.
