Rapid Quality Improvements by focusing on tipping points

If you’ve ever looked into a quality management system with Inspection Test plans and the like you’ll notice 2 things:

1. It’s designed for a big company with more staff than you have including a person who is a dedicated Quality manager

2. It is complicated and you have zero chance of implementing it in a small company

What a small builder or trade contractor needs is a different approach. You don’t have a comprehensive system of quality management, Understanding where the biggest risks and defect lie is the key to focusing your efforts on fixing the most important things first

Quality Improvement Strategies

1. Understanding Broader principles rather than relying on exhaustive forms

2. Finding the Tipping Points - Better Systems Managing Risks

3. Better Subcontractors in critical areas

4. Staff Training and Cultural Improvements

5. Tipping Point Events

1. General Principles

Redundancy - Avoiding single points of failure to prevent damage

Serviceability - Ability to inspect, replace, clean, repair without the need to demolish

Durability - ensuring that materials and components survive

Simplicity - Complex systems have many points of failure and can also fail in complex ways

2. Finding Tipping Points

The areas where the biggest risks lie are the areas where small investments can yield the biggest results. In construction mass structural failures like the Opal Towers or mascot apartments have captured the headlines but by far the elephant in the room in Sydney are 3 things: Water, Water and Water.

The main tipping is Moisture which accounts for the biggest share of construction problems - I would guess 80% of costs of serious defects are water related.

Tipping Points Gains for moisture prevention

Just assume that anywhere that can fill up with water will fill up with water, with Moisture redundancy is the key. Plan for every part of the building apart from bedrooms and living areas to be filled with water and think about where the water goes.

Step downs

Voids

Overflows

Inspections and access

3. Better Subcontractors

High Quality Subcontractors are a valid risk mitigation strategy in any industry, in any system but for a small builder - who may not have a quality (or risk) management system this represents a huge gain. It may also boost productivity and staff morale.

4. Staff and Culture

2 things can change the dynamic

1. Normalising the disclosure of mistakes, so that you and your staff can learn from them

2. Sharing your own mistakes and near misses so other can learn and this then helps the first point

5. Tipping Point Events

Tipping Point events are critical milestones which represent a window in time during a project where applied focus yields big quality gains. It’s easier to explain what I mean with some prime examples:

Construction Pours - Concrete pours are transformational, they turn steel and ply boxes into floors, roofs, and walls. But you only get once chance at it. Getting the pour and all the things that will be encased in concrete right is of paramount importance.

Roof Completion Testing - after you've completed the roof sheet you have an opportunity to see what happens before you install ceilings. 2 things: block all the gutters and flood the roof and then also replicate driven rain by hosing the roof to see if you can make any water enter the building.

Pre-sheeting - everything visible will be invisible and so much harder to repair.

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