Managing any organisation successfully requires a systematic approach. The success of construction organisations depends on successful implementation and maintaining a quality management system which is basically designed for addressing the needs of all stakeholders and ensuring continuous improvement. Following are the key factors which need to be focussed on for robust management of quality in the construction organisations.
A capable leadership is a key requirement of implementing quality management of any organisation. Leaders establish unity of purpose, direction, and the internal environment of the organisation. They create the environments, in which people can become fully involved in achieving the organisation’s objectives. The key benefits of effective leadership are:
- People will understand and be motivated towards the construction organisation’s goals and objectives
- Activities are evaluated, aligned, and implemented in a unified way
- Miscommunication between all levels of an organisation will be minimised, if not eradicated
- Considering the needs of all interested parties including customers, owners, employees, suppliers, financiers, local communities, and society as a whole is achieved
- Establishing a clear vision of the organisation’s future
- Setting challenging but achievable goals and targets
- Creating and sustaining shared values, fairness, and ethical role models at all levels of the organisation
- Establishing trust and eliminating fear
- Providing people with the required resources, training, and freedom to act with responsibility and accountability
- Inspiring, encouraging and recognising people’s contributions.
Organisations depend on their clients and therefore should understand current and future needs of clients. They must meet clients' requirements and strive to exceed their expectations. This approach will result in the following benefits:
- Increased revenue
- Increased effectiveness in the use of organisation’s resources to enhance clients' satisfaction
- Improved clients loyalty leading to repeat business
- Researching and understanding client s' needs and expectations
- Ensuring that the objectives of the construction organisation are linked to clients' needs and expectations
- Communicating clients' satisfaction and acting on the results
- Systematically managing clients' relationships
- Ensuring a balanced approach between satisfying clients, and other interested parties.
Involvement of Stakeholders
Stakeholders particularly the internal stakeholders such as staff and workers need to be involved on regular basis. Their full involvement enables their abilities to be used for the organisation’s benefit and lead to attainment of:
- Motivated, committed and involved people within the organisation and well-informed individuals outside the organisation
- Innovation and creativity in furthering the construction organisation’s objectives
- People being accountable for their own performance
- People eager to participate in and contribute to continual improvement
- People understand the importance of their contributions and roles
- People accepting ownership of problems and their responsibility for solving them
- People evaluating their performance against personal goals and objectives
Process Approach and Process Improvement
A desired result is achieved more efficiently and effectively when related resources and activities are managed as a process, resulting in lot of benefits. Process improvement techniques such as lean six sigma can minimise waste, defects, non-value activities, variation, need for rework, avoid duplication and improve overall efficiency. The other benefits of process improvement are:
- Improved, consistent and predictable results
- Focused and prioritised improvement opportunities
- Systematically defining the activities necessary to obtain desired results
- Establishing clear responsibility for managing key activities
- Analysing and measuring the capability of key activities
- Identifying the interfaces of key activities within and between the functions of construction organisation
- Focusing on factors such as resources, methods and materials that will improve key activities of the construction organisation
- Evaluating risks, consequences, and impacts of activities on customers, suppliers and other interested parties and managing accordingly.
Managing System of Interrelated Processes
Identifying, understanding, and managing a system of interrelated processes for a given objective can contribute to the effectiveness and efficiency of the construction organisation. It enables:
- Integration and alignment of the processes that will best achieve the desired results
- An ability to focus efforts on the key processes
- Providing confidence to interested parties, as to the consistency, effectiveness, and efficiency of the construction organisation
- Structuring a system to achieve the organisation’s objectives in the most effective and efficient way
- Understand the interdependencies between the processes of the system
- Providing a better understanding of the roles and responsibilities necessary for achieving common objectives and thereby reducing cross-functional barriers.
- Understanding organisational capabilities and establishing resource constraints prior to taking action
- Targeting and defining how specific activities within a system should operate
- Continually improving the system through measurement, evaluation, and reflection before taking actions.
Continual improvement should be a permanent objective of all construction organisations. It provides:
- A performance advantage through improved organisational capabilities
- Alignment of improvement activities at all levels
- A flexibility to react quickly to opportunities
- Employing a consistent organisation-wide approach to continual improvement of the construction organisation’s performance
- Providing people with training in the methods and tools of learning and continual improvement
- Making continual improvement of products, processes, and systems an objective for every individual in the construction organisation
- Establishing goals to guide and measure to track, continual improvement
- Recognising and acknowledging improvements.
Effective and Efficient Decision Making
Effective and efficient decisions are based on the logical and intuitive analysis of data and information and incorporating it into an effective decision-making process. It has lot of advantages:
- Informed and implementable decisions
- An increased ability to demonstrate the effectiveness of past decisions through reference to factual records
- Increased ability to review, challenge and change opinions and decisions
- Ensuring that data and information are sufficiently accurate and reliable
- Making data accessible to all those who need it
- Analysing data and information using valid methodologies
- Making decisions and taking actions based on factual analysis, balanced with experience and intuition.
Mutually Beneficial Supplier Relationship
Mutually beneficial relationships between the construction organisation and its suppliers enhance the ability of both organisations to create value. It results in:
- Flexibility and speed of joint responses to changing market or customer needs and expectations
- Optimisation of costs and resources
- Establishing relationships that balance short-term gains with long-term considerations
- Pooling of experience and resources with partners
- Identifying and selecting key suppliers
- Clear and open communication
- Sharing information and future plans
- Establishing joint development and improvement activities
- Inspiring, encouraging and recognising improvements and achievements by suppliers.
