The best quality, time and cost are the important aspects of successful construction project which fulfills the main goal of construction industry. The quality management has to provide the environment within which related tools, techniques and procedures can be deployed effectively leading to operational success for a construction project. The role of quality management for a construction company is not an isolated activity, but intertwined with all the operational and managerial processes of the construction project. The quality management system (QMS) in construction industry refers to quality planning, quality assurance and quality control. Quality is one of the aims of standardization. The quality of a product or a complete building or other constructions is the totality of its attributes that enable it to perform a stated task or to fulfill a given need satisfactorily for an acceptable period of time. Keyword: Construction industry, Construction project, Quality Management Pra.
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This paper describes the Quality Management System (QMS) concept and its application in the construction industry. A misunderstanding among the construction players on the QMS concept has become the stumbling block for its successful implementation. QMS could be implemented either at the company level or at the project level. The researches on the company-based QMS in construction can be considered as comprehensive in view of the various aspects of implementation have been studied. While many studies have been done on the company-based QMS, study on the project-based QMS is lagging behind. Notwithstanding the claims that the construction organisations enjoyed the benefits and advantages of being an ISO 9000 certified are literally proven, the main objective of QMS implementation namely the achievement of customer satisfaction in the construction projects is still at large. At the project level, QMS requires Project Quality Plan (PQP) as part of the system. PQP is also not well understood by the industry players and consequently the implementation of PQP faces a lot of problems. The significant information to be considered in developing, implementing and maintaining the PQP are the project policy and objectives, the process, the process owners and the work procedures. PQP could be developed either individually for each party of the project or as an integrated documents for all parties of the project team. 1. INTRODUCTION For the past decade, the Malaysian construction sector has been going through a radical change driven by the (ISO) quality policy of the Malaysian government. Recently, the number of contractors obtaining certification of ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS) is ever increasing. However, this progress is seemed to be a drastic response to the constant pressure and reminder made by the Ministry of Works and quality awareness and Do It Yourself (DIY) programs organized by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB). However, with insufficient experience on ISO quality implementation within the Malaysian environment, the construction participants are staggered with several performance-related problems. The pressure also comes from the ongoing process of economic globalisation. Experiences learned from other countries such as United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong revealed that QMS implementation was very encouraging at the initial stage but over a time period became burdensome to all parties involved if the right approaches were not adopted (Giles R. 1997, Chong 1994, Kam and Tang 1997, Low and Goh 1994). In the United Kingdom, some of the construction industry clients made it compulsory that the contractors implement ISO quality system in their organizations to qualify for participating in the bids (Giles, 1997). As a result, a tremendous impact was observed with more and more contractors seeking for ISO certification. Consequently, marketing and customers' insistence have become the key factors driving the ISO implementation, which are generally short-lived (Pateman 1994). The quality consultants might further worsen the situation as many of them are not from the construction background, hence do not understand the construction process (Giles, 1997). The organisations will normally trap in the vicious circle of compliance that creates lack of flexibility, emphasis on bureaucracy and paperwork and deficiency in quality improvement (Karapetrovic 1999). In addition, resistance to change in implementing the new system will create a chaotic situation (Al-Nakeeb and Mustapha 1994). As a result the implementation of the ISO system will not earn benefit to the company and neither will bring satisfaction to the customer. 2. OBJECTIVES This paper aims to explain the concept of QMS and PQP in the construction industry as follows: Quality Management System (QMS) in construction i. Company based QMS ii. Project based QMS Project Quality Plan (PQP) in construction i. Individual PQP ii. Integrated PQP 3. QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN CONSTRUCTION ISO 8402, the vocabulary of quality defined quality management as " all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives and responsibilities, and implement them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement, within the quality system ". Meanwhile, the definition of quality system according to ISO 8402 is " the organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures and resources needed to implement quality management ". Combining the definitions of 'quality system' and 'quality management' thus concludes that QMS is the interaction of people, processes and documentation to meet both customers' stated and implied needs. The result would be a reduction in inefficiencies and waste, improved work practices, increased morale and the opportunity for a greater market share. All these benefits are achieved through the implementation of QMS which ones should perceive it as a wide-scale failure prevention programme that will lead to costs savings.
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This chapter highlighted the results on the evaluation of the QMS implementation in the case project, Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). It first discussed the opinion of the experts gathered through a questionnaire regarding the propositions derived from the literature .
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International Journal of Engineering Technologies and Management Research
In Malaysia, construction industry plays an important role in benefitting towards the development of country's economy as well as providing the necessary infrastructure and enhanced facilities for social comfort. Despite these contributions, this thriving industry is responsible for generating an excessive amount of construction waste and numerous cases on delaying which then tarnish the reputation of the company. Therefore, this study evaluates the factors affecting the implementation of quality management system practices in construction project through the application of structured questionnaire and case study of high rise construction project to come out with a structured framework that can enhance the quality management system in construction project. The statistical techniques used to evaluate the data obtained are relative importance index (RII) and Average Index (AVI), while cronbach's alpha is used to measure the significant between three different groups of respondents, the reliability and validity of the study.
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science and Engineering Technology
Quality management systems are being operated in almost all sectors for products and services in the present time. In the construction sector quality control and quality assurance are of great concern for the construction project managers as the poor quality of construction results in early defects and failure of the structure this lowers the reputation of the company and leads to heavy repair costs. Further extra expenditure in achieving quality control and quality assurance is compensated by the advantages gained in the form of less maintenance, better quality and effective utilization of construction resources. There are many problems in applying the quality management effectively in construction due to its typical nature. There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of quality management system (QMS) in construction projects. In the present work an effort is made to assess the quality management and quality assurance practices awareness and implementation among the construction.
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TO address quality problems and their associated costs, the construction industry must pursue and implement innovative quality-management organizations and techniques. This paper presents the findings of a research project conducted to identify attributes of effective quality-management systems in the construction industry. The objectives were met through an extensive literature review and in-depth interviews with 142 engineering, construction, quality, and procurement personnel from 19 owner and contractor firms involved in heavy industrial , manufacturing, and commercial construction. The emergence of total quality management (TQM) applications in the construction industry was a significant finding of the interviews. The results indicate that substantial improvements in meeting quality requirements can be achieved by the use of TQM in the construction industry. Implementation techniques and attributes of effective quality-management systems were identified and categorized.
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The construction industry of Pakistan has been endeavoring for quality since long time. The absence of quality related regulatory body and the non-availability of local quality standards could not give a clear direction to local construction industry. An exploratory approach was adopted by studying the available literature to create a quality management framework for building projects and based on these a questionnaire was prepared, which was administered to project engineers, managers, supervising consultants and contractors. The important quality factor for the construction inputs and processes were included in the survey, which was also supported with the interviews of the selected major stakeholders. Quality check lists were developed in consultation with the field staff and actual projects were analyzed. The results showed that there an increasing awareness among the major stakeholders but the tools and techniques used for quality control are not reliable and consistent. There .
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