Counting the Cost of Inadequate Quality Control

Quality control is becoming a major structural weakness in construction, given its increasingly corrosive effect across all project delivery metrics from budgets to schedules. André Gunter, Head of Pre-Sales & Consulting at Idox explores the role of Idox’s cloud-based FusionLive in reducing project overruns, enforcing robust quality control processes and improving profitability.

Lack of Visibility

With spiralling supply chain costs and inflation undermining profit margins throughout the building industry, organisations recognise the need to impose strong control over every aspect of the business process. Yet endemic, poor quality control is causing delays and incurring significant rework costs. As a result, the cost of building errors now exceeding annual profits in the UK.

High rates of unresolved defects are damaging project performance: waste and rework is now estimated to push 70% of projects over schedule or budget. What is even more disturbing is that the same problems are repeated at the same site. Indeed, there are cases where remedial work have to be undertaken to rectify installations involving repeat activities from control units to sensors that were performed incorrectly hundreds and even thousands of times.

It is now vital to understand why problems persist for weeks, even months before they are identified. One company, for example, reported that a technician repeatedly wrongly fitted a control unit which caused £1.5 million in rework costs and delays.  Mistakes happen, of course, but quick identification and remediation can and should save the industry from delays, penalties and the profit-denting cost of rework.

Early Warning System

Early remediation can only happen if problems are visible – and, critically, visible to the right people who are empowered to take rapid and effective action. These projects would have benefited from improved quality management processes and supporting systems to provide “early warnings” or manage installation sign-off processes. 

Sadly, too many companies are still relying on archaic issues management, systems and processes. Indeed, the industry as a whole is still using manual paper-based activities to manually capture and report on issues. Laborious traditional inspection methods lead to far longer issue capture and quality control processes, while increasing the risk of human error.

Digital Transformation

There is a growing recognition of the power of digital processes and practices to drive improvements across construction organisations. At the heart of the transformation is connected data and the ability to leverage enterprise information management tools to deliver complete insight into project progress. FusionLive provides immediate access to cross project information, including the status of key deadlines. This gives project managers not only an early warning of emerging problems but also the ability to prioritise intervention based on the most urgent requirements.

With so many different factors influencing quality control, from late deliveries to component quality and the performance of teams and/or individuals, it can be hard to identify why problems are occurring. With at a glance, smart dashboards, a company can very quickly understand the trends in performance and identify the underlying cause.

Continuous Improvement

Connected and accessible data not only flags immediate issues but also supports a process of continuous improvement. By enabling project managers to drill down into the data, FusionLive encourages organisations to evolve beyond the urgent remedial actions required to keep projects on track and gain insight into the underlying problems. In depth understanding of historic data can transform quality control processes, by introducing targeted retraining for example, that minimise the risk of expensive and time-consuming errors occurring in the first place.

Leveraging insight to enforce robust quality control processes not only improves immediate profitability but also ensures an organisation’s projects grow progressively smarter and more efficient each time. 

Sources

1. FIEC. (2023). Rising prices and supply chain disruptions. [online] Available at: https://www.fiec.eu/priorities/rising-prices-and-supply-chain-disruptions
2. Construction errors cost billions. (n.d.). Available at: https://getitright.uk.com/live/files/resources/46-giri-digital-flyer-2020-608.pdf.
3. Lean Construction Institute. (n.d.). Lean Project Delivery. [online] Available at: https://leanconstruction.org/lean-topics/lean-project-delivery/.
4. Sawhney, A. and Knight, A. (2023). Digitalisation in construction report 2023. [online] rics.org. Parliament Square London: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) . Available at: https://www.rics.org/content/dam/ricsglobal/documents/research/Digitalisation%20in%20construction%202023_final.pdf.