This is a case study of a large US general contractor's efforts to rethink and implement a new behavior-based approach to quality to achieve zero errors, zero defects, zero rework, and zero surprises. This GC has a long history of building a culture of Behavior-Based Safety and has approached quality the same way. Recognition of upstream behaviors that resulted in quality issues and unpredictable results during construction led to a focus on changing the mindset and behaviors of all project stakeholders to enable the team to achieve the intended results. While owners and designers have an indirect connection to safety results, their behavior and actions directly affect quality outcomes. Although developed independently of Quality Function Deployment (QFD), this GC's approach is similar. Its approach focuses on understanding the customer's expectations and what is required technically in detail from suppliers to achieve them. It focuses on understanding and describing in technical terms what are the 'distinguishing' features of the work from each stakeholder's perspective, and on aligning its teams on measurable acceptance criteria to achieve customer expectations. This process for making knowledge explicit in order to agree on what quality means to the customer allows the team to fabricate and install its products correctly in such a way as to close the 'knowing-doing' gap that plagues most companies and projects.

A number of issues regarding quality, safety, and production persist in the construction industry. These issues arise in the form of rework, accidents, delays, cost overruns, and loss of trust. The way companies have been dealing with these issues is problematic because of an insufficiently broad perspective on interconnected processes and overreliance on buffering as opposed to reducing the negative variation itself. One gap in our knowledge concerns the influence of human factors in the design and success of construction processes. Psychological safety, a construct that can help to bridge this gap, is based on assessments about the risks associated with an action. Lean principles, such as respect for people, can be fostered through people being aware of each other's level of psychological safety. This is shown on site when people speak up without constraints, understand each other's expectations, and come to an agreement about the work, which follows the behavior-based quality (BBQ) approach. The paper highlights theoretical conceptions to describe how underlying ideas about Lean, psychological safety, and BBQ are connected in a people-centered approach to improve value delivery. The exploratory research presented in this paper provides empirical evidence to illustrate the linkage of these ideas in practice.