The Impact of Implementing a System Approach to Quality: A General Contractor Case Study

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel General Contractor approach to quality management called the Systems Approach to Quality (SAQ), which shares the Behavior-Based Quality (BBQ) concern for individual initiative and responsibility, and Quality Function Deployment (QFD) principles. Building on that previous work, this paper investigates the quantitative and cultural impacts of implementing a company's SAQ approach in its construction projects across the U.S. To do so, the authors examine lagging indicators of various performance areas including cost, schedule, quality, safety, and changes for a group of projects that implemented the SAQ approach and compare them to another group of projects that did not. The hypothesis under investigation is that SAQ implementation in projects improves performance across a range of critical indicators. Furthermore, the study compares project culture in projects where SAQ was implemented to those where it was not using Quinn's Competing Values Framework (CVF). The early results from this work indicate that the implementation of an approach such as SAQ leads to significant financial and non-cost benefits including improved collaboration.

Assessing Quality Performance Outcomes and the Relationship With Staffing: A General Contractor Case Study

“…The authors have worked to understand how project teams and the organization has implemented SAQ over the past six years (Gordon et. al 2021b).…”

“…The projects in the SAQ Intervention group all demonstrated, through discussions and sharing at a company-wide meeting called the "Monday Quality Calls", how they implemented the principles of a SAQ and their results (Gordon et al2021b). Each SAQ project was matched with a project of similar contract size, in the same core market, completed or within 90% of completion in the last five years and when in the same geographic region (Gordon et. al 2021a) The limitations of these data sets are: 1) it is a small sampling of projects, and a case study; 2) the projects are classified as having implemented or not implemented SAQ; 3) the data on staffing comes directly from the GC's platforms and the reporting from project teams.…”

“…This is the fourth paper in a study series to document and study one US based General Contractor's (GC) quality approach focused on achieving "zero errors, zero defects, zero rework and zero surprises" (Spencley et al 2018). This GC's quality approach required the organization and project teams to shift from assuming stakeholder expectations and only tracking lagging indicator issues to focusing on setting up systems and routines that prompt collaboration to define measurable acceptance criteria with tracking, to act on these leading indicators (Spencley et al 2018, Gordon et al 2021a.…”

“…al 2005). This Systems Approach to Quality (SAQ) also accepts that construction projects are complex and dynamic (Gordon et. al 2021a).…”

“…In the 2021 paper "The Impact of Implementing a System Approach to Quality: A General Contractor Case Study" the authors compared project performance outcomes and team cultural assessments for 11 projects that had implemented SAQ, the Intervention group, to a similar set of projects that had continued with a compliance specification-based approach to quality, the Control group. The projects that had implemented this GC's SAQ had significantly better outcomes for cost growth, fee gain, schedule growth at mobilization, change percent duration, value of percent changes and the value of claims as percentage of contract cost (Gordon et al 2021a). In this new paper the authors wanted to understand if project staffing and resourcing had any distinguishing differences between the two groups.…”