In the other post (Quality Activities), we already knew that quality activities in construction consist of 4 main pillars:
Strategic Direction.
Process and procedure.
Documentation.
Control of Resources.
Therefore, if you are appointed as quality personnel in a certain construction project, these 4 main pillars shall be your focus, and you need to plan, manage, and control all your daily activities around these 4 main pillars activities.
Yes, you need to plan, manage, and control all these activities around these four main pillars, starting from project inception until handover. By doing so, you can ensure that the resources are being utilized efficiently and effectively and that the project is completed within the allocated budget and timeline. This will also help minimize any potential risks or delays that may arise during the construction process. When producing a quality plan for a construction project, a popular approach is using plan, manage, and control stages. Before we get into the specifics, consider what Juran said about the quality process.
Dr. Joseph M. Juran introduced the 'Juran-trilogy' concept during the 1980s as a method for quality process. The traditional approach to quality at that time was based on quality control, but today, the Trilogy has become the basis for most quality management best practices around the world. The trilogy consists of:
Quality planning: The quality-by-design process enables innovation to happen by designing process controls to complete a project. The Juran Quality by Design model is a structured method used to create innovative process design features that respond to customers’ needs.
Quality Improvement - Improvement happens every day, in every organization—even among the poor performers. That is how businesses survive—in the short term. Improvement is an activity in which every organization carries out tasks to make incremental improvements, day after day. Daily improvement is different from breakthrough improvement. Breakthrough requires special methods and leadership support to attain significant changes and results. It's also different from planning and control because it requires taking a "step back" to figure out why the current level of performance isn't meeting customers' needs. By focusing on achieving breakthrough improvement, leaders can create a system to increase the rate of improvement.
Compliance, or quality control, is the third process in the Juran Trilogy. The term "control of quality" emerged early in the 20th century. The concept was to broaden the approach to achieving quality, from the then-prevailing after-the-inspection (detection control) to what we now call "prevention" (proactive control). For a few decades, the word "control" had a broad meaning, which included the concept of quality planning. Then came events that narrowed the meaning of "quality control."
However, during the 1950's, upon conducting the audit, most of the auditors found flaws in their organization's systems, and most of the auditees were not aware of what they should do or what the right way to do on daily basis, they might understand organization strategic direction for quality but not on the implementation level; therefore, it is not accurate to issue a finding based on something that they were not aware or know of.
Even though the quality planning stages shall have the planning on how the overall quality shall be managed, most of the time, for most workers, it just tells the brief strategic direction of quality from the top management point-of-view. Employees require more details (e.g., forms to be used, work instructions, standard operating procedures, etc.), and this is where quality assurance comes in.
Later on, for industrial purpose, the term quality assurance emerged, quality assurance become the fourth element, even though it is not introduced by Juran, but to give distinct element on quality planning and quality control, and also to give systematic and informative assurance that the iterative work will be done correctly, most of organisation adopt the concept of 4 element of quality which is QP, QA, QC and QI, and the most popular term used for the position offered by industry nowadays is QA & QC position which spawned by Juran and applied by the industry. Below is the snippet from the ISO 9000 on the concept of quality management which consists of these 4 elements:-
Hence, quality planning is about planning on the quality design, scope, focus, objectives, and model (e.g., ISO 9001 as a model, contractual requirements, etc.), while quality assurance will focus on detail and systematic ways of doing it, including processes, procedures, forms, checklists, metadata, etc. Quality assurance is essential to ensuring that quality planning is executed correctly, and that the final product or service meets the expected standards. It involves continuous monitoring, evaluation, and improvement of the processes to ensure that they are effective and efficient.
Juran's trilogy concept spawned much research after that, including ISO 9001, which, using Juran's model (besides W. Edward Deming's PDCA concept), introduced quality assurance as one of the important processes to ensure that quality is systematically planned and managed in an organization, This includes what to do if a defect is found, evaluation, reporting, and documentation (if you found this list is not comprehensive, don't worry, ISO 9001 will provide detail).
Good article