Construction Quality Control & Management in the Digital Age

welcome to quality management in the digital age for Maine contractors this course was developed in partnership with a group of global construction professionals and industry thought leaders who have shared their experiences so that you can benefit from their lessons learned you need to ensure all stakeholders understand clearly what's in it for them there are many benefits to a digital quality program risk mitigation improve quality winning more business and creating operational excellence we will look at a stepped process towards executing on a best-in-class digital quality program let's get to it I challenge you to think about what the next steps are for you and your project team hello there my name is Matt welcome to quality management in the digital age for Maine contractors in this course we'll discuss how you can take positive steps towards digitizing your quality assurance and quality control program on your construction project this course was developed in partnership with a group of global construction professionals and industry thought leaders who shared their experiences so that you can benefit from their lessons learned from time to time you'll hear from my British partner with expert tips upon completion of the course you'll have a greater knowledge of what a best-in-class digital quality program looks like and have a couple very practical next steps you can take away to try your project tomorrow at the beginning of the course we'll set the scene by exploring wide digitization is a relevant topic in our quality management programs today then cover what potential benefits are for you and your project team the remainder of the course will follow a structure that's used in all of the courses in the in the field curriculum will refer to this as the peri model first we discuss what should be planned for before moving into how you may approach executing on your digital quality management program doing this gives us the opportunity to leverage reports and data analytics to surface insights into project performance we'll finish the course by discussing how you may put in place foundations for continual improvement so that each and every day moving forward your quality program has the opportunity to get better than the day before at the completion of the course there'll be a five-question knowledge summary once it's done we'll generate a certificate that includes your name the name of the course and the continuing and professional development accreditation additionally you'll see that you've made progress towards completion of the contact Academy in the field accreditation this course is built for main or general contractors and construction managers who are looking to improve their existing quality programs with digital computing we will not cover the use of any particular hardware or software tools but rather just start by focusing on what we want to accomplish in the process how to do so at the end of the course if you're interested in taking additional steps we'll provide links to best-in-class industry tools that will assist you and your team understanding your projects tolerance for change is very important that's why throughout the course will emphasize taking a pragmatic approach by outlining a series of steps that can be taken whether you're just starting or have a well-established digital quality program and want to pick up a couple tips tricks and best practices this course is something for you at anytime while you're taking the course you'll be given access to download a wealth of supplementary materials templates and guides that you can use as a starting point or for reference you can download them by clicking on the resources tab these resources are being shared with you from the industry thought leader organizations that have helped us build these courses visit the partners page to learn more about these companies so let's get started with quality management in the digital age let's take a look at why this course is relevant today throughout history mankind is innovated through the agricultural revolution we transitioned from being foragers to farmers the Industrial Revolution which many say is still occurring today marked a shift from performing tasks with our own hands to leveraging machinery adapting to new tools and technology is nothing new to us we've been doing it throughout history today we are well into the digital revolution in all industries are trying to figure out how to take advantage of the tools at our disposal so that we can best take advantage of digital technology this course will focus on how we can improve the underlying process in our quality program this course is particularly relevant to all of us in construction because we know the industry has lagged in its adoption of digital technology McKinsey & Company one of the world's most prestigious management consultancy companies conducted research in construction industry in 2015 among their findings was that the construction industry was in fact second-to-last in their adoption of digital technology only behind agriculture and hunting this is one of the key factors in why construction labor productivity has been relatively flat compared to most other industries most notably when we look at the gains that the manufacturing industry has achieved over time we see a drastic contrast now don't get me wrong comparing the mass production of the same product over and over again those historic to the manufacturing industry with the custom nature of every construction project isn't exactly mixing apples to apples however more and more we see prefabrication techniques evolving in becoming more and more commonplace in construction for example we've seen successful examples of design for manufacturing and assembly or DFM a where instead of designing for a final product modular components are being designed for assembly this is underpinned by the growth of a manufacturing oriented mindset akin to lean principles that focus on flow and reduction of waste many of you may have seen the graph of US labor productivity in the construction industry versus all other non farm industries put up by the US Department of Labor it highlights that construction is drastically lagging in finding productivity benefits as technology and innovation have become available over time recently McKinsey & Company also took a look at labor productivity in the UK and Germany over time we can see the overall economic productivity increasing while the labor productivity of the construction industry has stayed relatively flat one takeaway is that this is a global challenge not just localized to the United States or United Kingdom I've heard many opinions on why we have been so slow to adopt digital technology many have merit and involve a deep investigation into the relationship dynamics of funding contract methodology in the customized nature of every project we work on one thing I can say confidently though is that human nature plays a big role change has parallels with risk and we are risk-averse industry for the sake of this course when we say digital we're gonna focus on potential process change from the use of computers and electronic information one of the underlying assumptions when we refer to the use of mobile technology throughout this course is that it's underpinned by digital technology in construction we see the continued replacement of paper-based plans and drawings inspections being performed electronically and data is being used to provide insight into project performance more commonly clients are requiring structured digital information that's searchable and easily accessible therefore contracts includes standard language regarding the use of ownership of digital information as we progress through the course I challenge you to think about what practical steps you can take to make an improvement on your project tomorrow as you do one thing to keep in mind is your team's readiness for change some teammates may be averse to trying anything new while others might very well be frustrated that there isn't enough change there's a senior site manager from an innovative construction firm out of the United States who once said to one of his teammates who is trying to introduce a a bit of new technology said you need to remember that you were born into the digital world while I'm an immigrant to it this quote really hit home when deciding what the right amount of change is to introduce the answer is not going to be a little bit at a time or it might not even be hey all of it all at once the answer really should be that it's it's what your team could handle to make any progress in improving our digital quality program it's important that we understand the potential benefits effectively the why in introducing change to any organization it's critical that folks understand what's in it for them this is really gonna help you in gaining support and minimizing pushback there are many benefits to a digital quality program we've attempted to group them into four major categories risk mitigation improve quality leading to minimize rework winning more business and creating operational excellence at its simplest form many say that a main contractors primary goal is to minimize risk in many forms one of the most common areas of risk on our projects is ensuring that we're building off the most up-to-date set of information especially with projects involving many requests for information or change orders the sooner and more real-time we can get the information into the hands of those who need it the lower our risk have you ever been in a situation where a specification lacked a particular detail and so there was a paper RFI sent to one of your teammates but somehow it slipped through the cracks and collected dust on somebody's desk meanwhile construction continues and the equipment that gets installed turns out to be way underneath specification so here you are in commissioning phase of the project and finding that your system is way under performance the RFI was filed but the information never got to the right folks who procure equipment and then install it a digitized program improves visibility to what is happening on a construction project in close to real time so that risk can be identified and addressed earlier on a 1 water treatment project a team with a well-established digital quality program had just poured a concrete vessel and using a digital laser scanner identified that it was flexing too much they had to rework it but catching it at the point in construction rather than down the line saved a tremendous amount of time and money a digital program enables us to leverage mobile technology to access and gather information from the point of construction the information gathered now enables us to measure leading indicators of risk later in the course we'll discuss how you can report on our quality program including metrics like coverage and conformance that give you visibility into a project's risk profile additionally by leveraging data we're able to improve the way we select our trades and subcontractors based on historical performance ultimately enabling us to assemble the best value team considering quality perform leading to reduced risk by digitizing our program will improve the quality of our deliverable and as a result minimize the amount of rework we see this in a couple areas first by implementing a digital program we're making access to up-to-date accurate information in the field a reality by enabling our team to access the information they need when they need it at the point of construction will have an improved output on one project the team really struggled to finish out the first floor the Quality Manager and the senior site manager got together to understand why this was the case using their digital quality program they were able to pull up a visual of where all the issues occurred and found a pattern where every fourth room on the floor tended to have a large number of issues this was curious so they looked at their schedule and they found that subcontractors were working out a sequence causing pain for one another the problem was less about the subcontractors performance and more that they weren't working in the flow and sequence of the job the digital issue list allowed them to visualise the problem so the remaining floors could be improved additionally by digitizing our inspection process were able to ensure nothing slips through the cracks any defect identified is logged and won't be lost when having to transcribe your notes or shuffle through paper instead we're able to ensure we're tracking every issue to resolution by putting in place a checklist program we set a baseline for quality by ensuring the most important areas are inspected a digital program carries strong efficiency gains from not having to run back and forth to the project office to get the most up-to-date set of plans or drawings not having to read transcribe your notes not having to assemble reports that can be automated when performing inspections instead of having to write down every observation we can simply check them off a list or automatically associate a photo the time gained back from not having to do these administrative value less tasks can then be applied to performing value add tasks like additional detailed inspections that will improve your call a digital quality program allows you to improve the visibility of inspection and test program to the project stakeholders you see fit many main contractors have reported improved relationship with their clients by providing visibility into all of the inspections that are being performed what this did was put in context the number of deficiencies identified based on the project complexity having a dozen unresolved defects or as you might call them non-conformance --is it might sound like a negative thing if that's all you really know but if your client has visibility that you inspected 30 areas of work last week and made over a thousand quality observations then 12 non-conforming items in contact seems very manageable one of our partners sees the digital quality program allows construction management firms to engage clients and project team members in an open hands on deck interactive environment from the onset of the project all the way through execution and handover an advantage that they see is the ability to demonstrate to the project owners the principle that their project is now a collaborative partnership rather than an individual responsibility matrix when we say a digital quality program improves operational excellence we're referring to how it can improve a company internally from its people process and relationships with third parties many will argue that the most important asset any construction company has is its people along with their collective knowledge and experience a digital quality program gives an organization the ability to take the best practice and knowledge from its most experienced teammates and capture it to be carried forward in the form of a checklist another advantage cited by one of our partners is the improved accountability of all project stakeholders driven from the digital workflows for example they have the ability to actually measure project performance of their subcontractors instead of it being anecdotal the conversations they have today where their subcontractors are grounded in facts in data and carry a very different tone before we dive into executing on your digital quality program there are a couple things we should plan for at the foundation of a structured program is your inspection and test plan or ITP a digital communication plan will help you set expectations up front and leverage digital output to improve collaboration and customer satisfaction finally we will look at a stepped process towards executing on a best-in-class digital quality program your inspection and test plan forms the foundation of your proactive quality assurance program and may be included in your works method statement it may reference what bodies of work are inspected in reference to specification sections when the inspections are to be formed on what frequency and with what sample size who performs inspections including call-out of hold and witness points how the inspections are to be performed including definition of success or failure how information is captured including whether a photo should be captured where information will be stored and if inspection will be part of client deliverable it'll include how non-conformance is and conformance 'iz will be documented and managed optionally we want to begin to tie inspections to project schedule major milestones in locations of installation one of our partners says that since our implementation of dedicated digital workflow processes and procedures our quality standards ie their inspection and test plans have become centralized and consistent throughout the entire company no matter what the project size is or where the project location is due to having multiple office locations this is critical in our success in keeping our company standards hi I'm Dave and I'm here to give you my top tips on quality management in the digital age my advice for making inspection and test plans user friendly is to keep it simple these are very important documents that if implemented successfully provide a tool to ensure structure and integrity in your quality program but if you let them get too large or complex they're just as likely to gather dust as a quality control manager of one of the content Academy partners puts it I much prefer IT peas that have a standard process to be implemented over and over again with high risk items listed for additional controls another way to keep it simple is to create quick guides for easy reference for each major application like wall tiles create a single page guide that highlights the things that are important includes a reference benchmark and then links to the appropriate specification or checklist inspections if further details is required the goal of a digital communication plan is to have a clear understanding and expectations of quality among all stakeholders at the onset of the project then a way in which you're able to hold all stakeholders accountable for their bits starting with a digital communication plan which lays out just three things we'll put you on really good footing one the stakeholder - the frequency of communication with that stakeholder and three finally the digital output with your client or the project owner it's very important that you clearly outline the expectations of your quality assurance process at the beginning of the project the more detail you provide upfront the less objective the judgment of the deliverable will be at handover be sure that this expectation aligns your inspection and test plan and procedure the clients involvement in the inspection optionally noting whether or not the design team is going to be involved you want to know what visibility and reporting will be provided during and after the inspections perhaps the most importantly a well-defined client handover process including training and data deliverables with all of your trades and subcontractors be sure to include language in their contracts around their involvement in the inspection process share your inspection and test plan with them outline your Quality Assurance procedures including resolution of non conformance 'as RFI's and change orders including the expectations on timeliness and level of documentation of the responses in this sample will see that the stakeholder frequency meeting and digital output have been defined focusing on the digital output drives visibility needed for real collaboration and holds all stakeholders accountable as mentioned it's important to take reasonable steps often one at a time so that your team has the opportunity to adjust and does not feel overwhelmed to this end we've developed a five stage evolution to help you decide what steps you will take a great starting point is to digitize all of your reactive quality management defects and non-conformance --is by implementing a centralized digital issue log this will help drive ownership make sure nothing slips through the cracks ensure it's all documented including corrective action and resolution next we want to get even more organized by bolstering our inspection and test plans with checklist inspections this will cover you by ensuring conforming in addition to non conforming observations are documented once you're comfortable with your checklist inspections get proactive and start linking them to milestones in your project schedules and discussing their use in your look ahead planning meetings once your team is on board we want to get collaborative by enabling your trades and subcontractors to participate in the checklist inspection program finally put in place a continued improvement loop so that the improvement never ends by implementing a corporate digital checklist template library and put in place a process where every team member is empowered to feedback lessons learned having helped many individual project teams through this journey often we get stuck in the reactive stage and seem to fight fires throughout the project lifecycle those projects that do achieve collaborative or continual improvement typically need strong leaders that encourage technology and collaboration in the field we look at each of these stages in detail in the coming chapters in this section we gave you a couple foundational planning items to consider we discussed the value in some sample content of an inspection and test plan we discussed how a digital communication plan helps align expectations and then we looked at a staged approach towards a best-in-class digital quality program this chapter will walk through the first four stages for execution of a best-in-class digital quality program in detail first how to implement a centralized digital issue log second how to bolster your inspection and test plan with digital checklist inspections third incorporating inspection activities into your schedule and fourth performing collaborative inspections with your trades and subcontractors a great starting point in digitizing our quality assurance program is to centralize our issues or defect lock providing one centralized source of follow-up and action items helps all stakeholders stay on task and focused on what is important merging multiple lists are having multiple versions of the issue log leads to additional work and causes confusion among all the stakeholders a centralized digital issue log enables documentation of non-conformance ah's or work to complete on the fly as your team walks the site provides real-time visibility drives responsibility and ownership and ultimately cuts down on communication delays in time to resolution the core features are that there's a single centralized digital repository or a database that stakeholders can easily access it on demand in the office and out on the site at the point of construction that we have a real-time access in the ability for multiple stakeholders to collaborate and make updates without overriding one another finally we wanted to have role based permissions enable privacy and security and help manage workflow based on the status of the issue if we were to process diagram out our approach to implementing this it looked a little bit like this first we define what information needs to be captured accessed and modified including by whom this will quickly flush out what data attributes need to be set up at a minimum you'll want to separate attributes to capture certain information some of the things you're gonna need to capture is a place where you describe what the problem is as well as what needs to be done about it where it's located perhaps you'll do that in relation to your work breakdown structure you'll need to know who is responsible for resolving this issue traditionally this would be one of your subcontractors you'll need to categorize or give it a type so that you know how to manage it you'll need to know what the status is so you can track it you want to know what the date you found it was and what the date you sent it to your subcontractor to resolve was so you can count how long it takes for your subcontractors to action and resolve these issues in somewhere where the corrective action taken can be noted when resolved so that it can be referenced down the line you know some other information you might want to capture might include photos of the problem and potentially photos of the resolution the priority or severity of the issue when the issues due and when it was resolved and you want the ability to flag an issue as having a potential back charge schedule or cost impact the next thing you'll need to do is determine where your central issue log will live most common today's solutions will be stored in a cloud database to enable real-time access many solutions will have a mobile component so your team can log or address defects at the point of construction third you'll need to determine who will have what level of access to the system often this is based on a set of roles on the project for example your team may have full access to all the issues while your trades or your subcontractors may only have access to modify certain information for just the issues that they're associated with fourth define how different types of issues will be resolved build a status workflow assigning responsibility at each stage we've added a diagram of two common workflows in our course downloads one for issues you manage between you and your trades and subcontractors and another workflow for issues that were identified by a third-party team like the architects engineers or the owner or the client fifth build an onboarding program to ensure your team including external stakeholders have the training they need to be successful and finally ensure there's a feedback loop collect feedback from your team and continually improve your solution and workflows look as I say garbage in garbage out setting up standard naming around all project data brought into our digital quality system ensures consistency in sharing information thereby allowing us to leverage data analytics to measure performance and identify trends out of the system also standard naming conventions help make sure all project stakeholders are speaking the same language as they exchange information and if we carry them forward it will reduce a learning curve on the next project when we apply this to our issue tracking program we should first define what types of issues are identified and for each clearly define the procedure for resolution here are the four most common types of issues and a brief description of each work to complete issues these relate to work packages in the tasks they've been identified as incomplete and require inspection once complete say the tasks of contractors started tiling a shower but hasn't set the shower pan you want to remember to come back to have a look before they cover it up nonconformist issues these represent defects in completed work and thus require rework for example the same Tyler sets the shower pan but it's not draining properly and needs to get reworked requests for information are also important to capture and track resolution often teams have rules of engagement that set expectations of response time between your team and the architect engineer or design team finally before we can hand over the keys to our client we need to capture our clothes our issues these represent the final list of issues identified that require resolution before we have final sign-off in the UK we refer to them as snags and in the US we refer to them as punch list issues when setting up common naming around certain information we should think about what information we want out of the system very commonly teams want to report on the number of issues assigned to certain subcontractors or related to specific locations so you'll need to ensure they also have a standard naming invention finally to ensure we're not just reacting and resolving issues that arise but instead of putting in place measures to prevent similar issues in the future we need to understand the root cause of any defects we'll talk a bit more about root cause analysis in the chapter on reporting digitally documenting issues is a good start but only gives us half the story if I perform a wall close and inspection and I hand my site manager a list of only the issues that I've identified they have to assume that anything that's not on that list it was checked and it was found to be conformant we all know what assumptions do and it's not defend you in case of a claim or litigation one of our partners tells us a story from when he was first starting out in construction way back when before there was mobile or digital technology in his site manager he'd asked him to perform an inspection he'd come back from his inspections with a list of all the issues that he'd spotted and the first thing the site manager would say every single time regardless of how many issues he had identified on that list he'd say would you leave out the site manager did this to make him think through the process and what could have been missed effectively the site manager was pushing him to create a mental checklist back before we had digital checklists or a formal checklist program by bolstering our inspection and test plans with a set of best-in-class checklist templates we'll see the following benefits will easily document all conforming inspection points in addition to those non-conforming issues this gives us the ability to positively affirm conformance they serve as a guide so that we don't miss anything maybe we spot a major defect like our studs are being installed too far off center and we have to focus on ensuring we have a resolution path because our attention was diverted maybe we miss a smaller issue like an incorrectly placed electric socket they also drive conformance in how we execute our quality program regardless of who does the inspection on a project or within your company among everyone from the most junior to the most senior they give you a mechanism to capture the best-in-class knowledge of the entire company by sourcing the checklist template from your entire team you can take the knowledge and experience overall of your team's years of experience and get it written down and share it out with everyone else moving full it drastically improves the speed at which your quality observations can be documented resulting in the ability to observe and document a greater number of inspection points ultimately resulting in higher quality finally leveraging a digital program you can analyze inspection results to better track quality program performance including inspection coverage and conformance rates will spend more time on these metrics in the next chapter let's take a look at a sample checklist template we need to uniquely identify it some folks will number their inspections others will reference the date and location or subcontractor being inspected each item on the checklist describes what should be inspected gives a simple positive or negative response and optionally can associate images or create issues to be followed up on many inspections will have an area you and anyone else involved in the inspection can sign off we see how the checklist allows us to easily document not only non-conforming but also conforming observations this ensures evidence is always there is never lost and is searchable for one of our partners the inspection is part of the definition of done inspection isn't something that is completed afterwards we see this in lean construction philosophy as well where the work isn't complete until it's validated if you haven't validated you're not actually done you're just saying you're finished for the day so once you have your digital checklist program in place you want to get proactive by relating specific inspections to schedule milestones then assure a process by which your team is planning for inspections that will incur with specific tasks and work packages so you don't get caught on the back foot looking back at a wide portfolio of projects one of our partners was able to see that common thread among successful teams was that their project schedule not only called out work-related activities but also tests and strategy activities for example a precast fabrication meeting would be an activity in their schedule with this as an activity in their schedule people would talk about them more often in their coordination meetings and expected that an inspection was just another activity that needs to be done many teams will also conduct two four or six week look ahead planning meetings where they get together with all relevant stakeholders and talk about what work is to be performed in what sequence in the coming weeks during this meeting one topic should be what quality measures will be put in place for specific work you want to discuss what who and how what work will be inspected who is responsible for inspecting the work at different stages as part of the typical inspection a test plan be sure to call out hold and witness or sign off points and how the inspections will be performed with regard to sample size and level of detail from this you can then source your checklist from your best practice corporate template chest lists library and make any specific modifications for your project that are necessary the next stage of development of your best-in-class digital quality program requires you to get collaborative with your trades and subcontractors by engaging with them and getting them involved in the inspection process in your two four or six week look ahead planning meetings involve your trades and subcontractors when building out your checklists to improve alignment and set expectations this will reduced a number of non conformance ha's and a resultant REE inspection efforts required as one of our thought leading partners describes it they turned a quarter on their quality program when they enabled their subcontractor partners to take ownership for their own quality programs before they invested time into quality of sharing their work for some subcontractors they went so far as to allow the subcontractors to load their own checklists into their digital quality management system this may not be necessary for all inspections you may require this for particularly complex bodies of work or maybe you require when you identify that a particular subcontractor is struggling to perform a particular body of work depending on your team's culture you may take a top-down approach and mandate it by including language describing the expectations of your subcontractors involvement in their contracts mandating collaboration will only get you so far though you also need to ensure that your subs are on board by explaining what's in it for them and why this way of working benefits the entire project then do as much as you can to make it easy for them to make the transition one team I worked with went so far as to print out the initial checklist inspections and had them first fill them out on paper before transitioning to a fully digital solution in this chapter we cover the first four stages for execution of a best-in-class digital quality program we talked about how to set up a centralized digital issue log how to bolster your inspection and test plan with digital checklist inspections how to link your inspection activities to your schedule and perform a collaborative inspections with your trades and subcontractors debatably the largest benefit of a digitized quality program is that you now have the data that if organized properly can surface insights into project and program performance arming your team with knowledge to make more informed decisions on a daily basis in this chapter we'll take a look at three common metrics used to measure quality on your project take an in-depth look at root cause reporting and then walk through the process of leveraging data to build insights executing a quality program on your project without measurements for success is like flying a plane blind sure the most experienced pilots can fly by the seat of their pants that's no way to build a best-in-class scalable quality program by setting goals for success at the onset of the project with your team you're going to improve stakeholder alignment and keep your team focused on performing three of the most common metrics for quality programs are coverage conformance rate and subcontractor scoring coverage is a measure of the number of inspections or quality observations performed by monitoring this we have a way to better understand our level of risk or exposure on the project since on projects we can't check everything we have to rely on sampling well holds that the more inspections are the more observations that we make the less likely we are to miss something and thus the lower the risk profile on the project the inverse is also true conformance rate it's a measurement of the percentage of work performed correctly upon initial installation you can review this by inspection type to understand which areas of work or inspection procedures produce the highest or lowest conformance this informations will arm you with understanding of subcontractor performance and areas for improvement it also helps you identify where your team is spending additional time managing the trades and subs if every non-conformance takes you three hours to determine the corrective action line everyone out and then re-inspect that is taken away from the time that can be spent performing value add tasks like additional inspections increasing your coverage and reducing risk finally one of our thought leading partners tells us that the value of their company includes their relationships with great subcontractors that a project can be made or broken upon subcontractor selection they recognize that their success is intertwined by measuring subcontractor performance we have an opportunity to identify and help struggling sub con tractors improve and have more information for the next project when we're selecting our team we recommend putting together a subcontractor scorecard system your scorecard can get more advanced as your digital quality program evolves as a starting point you can leverage information out of your central digital issue log this may include counting the number of issues by severity including those that had scheduled or cost impact those that affected others and the average time to resolve those issues as a measure of responsiveness your program becomes more advanced and you integrate checklist data you can analyze trends to determine performance on specific bodies of work or even specific sections or items on your checklists one of our partners says that there are subcontractor scorecards help them avoid anecdotes and get to the data they're able to score their subs on every project by quality and efficiency when working with their subcontractors another partner looks for subcontractors who show improvement over time this shows they're able to learn from their mistakes incorrect behavior it's also a decent indicator that the project site manager was able to work with them effectively and get the best out of them Winston Churchill is quoted as having said those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it well maybe not quite in that voice well funny thing about history if it isn't written down nobody remembers it you're probably not going to learn from it with our digital quality program we have the ability to learn from our past so that we can better arm ourselves for the future that's why putting in place a root cause reporting system is so important here's a five step approach to hansung your root cause program first you have to look at existing and known issues to understand patterns then determine a set of common root causes be sure that any root cause you determine would be actionable meaning there's something you could do to improve next time also keep the list as simple as possible if you want folks to fill it out third make sure your team understands how to classify all defects with a root cause fourth out of a centralized digital issue log pull together all the root causes over a specified period of time find your biggest offenders in terms of how often they appear are large their impact when they appear and how actionable you could prevent them fifth take action against the root cause and follow-up and measure any change to drive accountability and further learning this is a loop that should never end now that you've looked at some examples of how you can leverage digital information to surface insights and improve your understanding of project performance let's recap how this is done regardless of what stage of development your digital quality program is here are five simple steps one have open discussions with your corporate or project team stakeholders and understand how you're going to measure success to determine where the data needs to come from to create those metrics determine how that information is going to be collected by your team 3 determine how that information is going to be presented out to your team 4 be sure to follow up and take action on those insights data for the sake of data is useless in five don't stop improving collect feedback and improve process as your digital quality program evolves and more data is captured supplement metrics or feed in additional ones a truly best-in-class digital quality program is one that enables a culture of continuous improvement we should strive to improve our quality program every day by leveraging the collective knowledge and experience of all of our teammates to benefit every one of their peers perhaps even more difficult we need to foster a culture where our team feels ownership and empowerment to participate in this continual improvement construction at its core is a people business the value of a construction company is their employees and their knowledge plus their relationship with subcontractors more people the median age of construction worker is high according to the US and UK census data and by 2025 seventy five percent of workers will be millenials before our people retire we need to unlock all the knowledge and experience in their brains so that the future generations can benefit two ideas for doing this one we want to capture all that knowledge and experience by digitizing it when building your corporate template checklist program sit-down or follow around your most senior site managers and pick their brains as they perform specific inspections ask them what to inspect and what to watch out for in different scenarios some teams I've worked with have been effective in assembling a task force to do this a second idea perhaps a bit more radical you can bring back but also reinvent the apprenticeship program traditionally pair up your junior site personnel with your senior experience site managers but create a relationship that's bi-directional the senior teammates share their deep domain knowledge and experience as in a traditional apprenticeship but in return the junior teammates who were born in the digital age instead of being immigrants to it assist in the use of electronics and Technology there's bi-directional apprenticeship fosters a much greater mutual respect provides benefit for both parties and drives ownership for both generations introducing or changing culture to embrace continuous improvement whereas many might see it change is going to take intentional effort from your team it all starts at the top rolling out a new process without buy-in from your management team will have you fighting an uphill battle next you need to ensure all stakeholders understand clearly what's in it for them and what they will be held accountable for if you can make the process easy for them and empower them to contribute you'll be heading in the right direction I've had the pleasure of spending time with some of the world's best in class quality teams and here are a couple very practical initiatives that I've seen implemented in generating positive results develop a central knowledge repository for sharing information on your project or across all projects in your company this may include best practices lessons learned or even your checklist templates put in place an easy process where any project team member can initiate improvement to the checklist templates with lessons learnt or from gathering insights from issue defects that continually pop up this isn't too far off how in the original lean manufacturing any member on an assembly line could hold up their hand and stop the assembly line and offer a process improvement idea to management leverage recognition programs to find subject matter experts and give them a microphone to share their knowledge and experience with the rest of the organization this could take a couple of forms one way I've seen implemented successfully is an annual awards program with a referral program that allows you to create multiple categories for awards some examples might be awards an excellence for particular project programs like quality or safety perhaps using project performance metrics like coverage to identify Award candidates another award might be an award for innovation where you can identify folks for improvement in process or their use of technology maybe even an award for collaboration that spotlights multi stakeholder project teams alternatively to an awards program you could more informally develop a Lunch and Learn program or webinar series where you can spotlight subject matter experts give them more visibility in the company while at the same time helping the rest of your company learn from their knowledge or experience in this chapter we briefly touched on many ideas for creating a culture of continuous improvement we talked about capturing knowledge and experience getting management buy-in it in explaining the why developing a central knowledge repository enabling your teammates to give feedback and building a recognition program congratulations at this point you've completed the quality management in the digital age course and are ready to do the knowledge summary here you'll have five questions that will touch on a number of important topics we have covered upon successful completion will generate and unlock a continuum professional development credit for your download after that I encourage you to complete the remaining courses in the in the field curriculum so that you can unlock the exam and become contact Academy in the field accredited which you can include on your CV or resume or even add as a badge to your LinkedIn profile also don't forget to download and leverage those resources graciously provided by our partners whether you're just starting out or are well on your way toward a fully digitized quality management solution I hope this course helped provide you with some new ideas or help you better structure how to think about some of the things you already were familiar with we talked about being aware of readiness for change a couple of times I challenge you to think about what the next steps are for you and your project team so thanks again for joining me have a great day

Channel: Autodesk BIM 360

Views: 2,437

Rating: 4.75 out of 5

Keywords: autodesk, autodesk construction, learning, construction, construction technology, contech, bim 360, quality control, digital, contech academy

Id: K-Dz8v71OVg

Length: 52min 15sec (3135 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019