Measuring Design and Construction Quality Costs

Several troublesome challenges face the U.S. construction industry: productivity is down, litigation is up, delays are common and expensive, foreign firms are taking a greater share of the market. The reasons are complex, but one important common factor is quality-or rather, the lack of it. In view of these facts, a quality performance tracking system (QPTS) has been developed to provide for the quantitative analysis of certain quality-related aspects of projects, by systematically collecting and classifying costs of quality. By defining quality as "conformance to requirements," the cost of quality becomes measurable. It consists of two main parts, the cost of quality management efforts and the cost of correcting deviations. A total of 15 categories identify the main quality management efforts. When coupled with 24 deviation categories (plus six "repeat" quality management categories), most of the important quality costs can be identified for tracking and analysis. These categories can be easily changed and adapted to meet individual company requirements for design, construction, and start-up.