Recent evidence indicates that quality control is becoming a major structural weakness in construction, with an increasingly corrosive effect across all project delivery metrics from budgets to schedules. Smart technology can involve all workers in identifying – and preventing – issues across projects, says André Gunter of Idox
The cost of building errors exceeds annual profits in the UK, causing added delays and rework costs in an industry where margins are already being squeezed by inflation and soaring supply chain costs.
Quality control is becoming a casualty of growing pressure to expedite delivery times amid rising project delays.
At the same time, it is becoming more challenging to maintain consistent quality across increasingly complex, sprawling capital projects. The resultant rise in construction errors is causing budget overruns and delays and growing compliance risks for contractors.
The headwinds buffeting quality control
With the construction industry being buffeted by economic headwinds from rising inflation to material shortages, project schedules are increasingly being knocked off course.
This is leading to growing pressure on contractors to expedite project delivery times. A study in Singapore found that increasing the pace of construction work can lead to quality being sacrificed for speed.
Quality control challenges are being further compounded by the increasing scale and complexity of construction projects, often involving diverse cross-sector partners and subcontractors.
It is not uncommon to find hundreds of thousands of errors that must be managed, triaged and resolved across one large project. More large and complex projects mean that data on these errors can be lost in translation between teams, with many construction errors now caused by miscommunication.
This is being exacerbated by the persistence of archaic issues management, systems and processes across the industry still using paper-based approaches to manually capture and report on issues. Laborious traditional inspection methods lead to far longer issue capture and quality control processes, while increasing the risk of human error.
The ripple effect on project performance and safety
High rates of unresolved defects are having a significant effect on project performance, with waste and rework pushing 70% of projects over schedule or budget.
There are cases where remedial work has to be undertaken to rectify installations involving repeat activities from control units to sensors that were performed incorrectly hundreds and even thousands of times.
For example, one company reported that a technician repeatedly wrongly fitted a control unit, which caused £1.5m in rework costs and delays.
These projects would have benefited from improved quality management processes and supporting systems to provide “early warnings” or manage installation sign-off processes.
Building errors can also expose contractors to compliance violations or claims for contract breaches.
Furthermore, unresolved errors can cause safety risks to workers during operations or trigger inadvertent breaches of safety, sustainability and quality regulations. This raises project costs and risks at a time when the increasing burden of risk on contractors is already causing many to re-evaluate traditional contracts and delivery models.
Smart, preventative quality control
Some contractors are now turning to construction 4.0 technologies that foster more collaborative, joined-up issues management across complex, fast-paced projects.
These technologies are engaging all employees in quality control by allowing any construction worker to remotely report errors from the field, whether on or offline, using smartphones or tablets. Errors can be pinned on drawings to enable a rapid, targeted response.
Digitally integrating quality management data from all parties helps overcome silos between teams and provides common visibility of project errors to enable collective solutions.
Remote, real-time monitoring of issues across locations allows contractors to switch from reactive to preventative quality control akin to “predictive maintenance”. Machine learning algorithms could in future harness this data to predict and prevent issues before they even arise.
Joining the dots for smart, collaborative quality control
Connected data transforms a fragmented paper trail into a joined-up audit trail, establishing clear accountability and traceability across complex, multi-party projects.
Real-time updates on defect status across all locations helps prevent any errors falling through the cracks.
Consolidating quality control data also helps contractors join the data dots and identify common trends over time, such as project teams responsible for repeated building errors.
As a result, growing use of processes and practices driven by digitalisation are producing improvements across construction organisations. Contractors can also harness historic data to improve quality control processes so that projects grow progressively smarter each time.
Restoring transparency to construction quality
Standardising and centralising quality control data breaks down departmental silos and facilitates collective oversight and collaborative issues management across complex projects.
This streamlines communication among project stakeholders including architects, contractors, subcontractors and clients, and enables a smooth handover of project data to owners.
Remote, real-time monitoring of project-wide issues with tools such as digital dashboards and reporting will bring greater trust and transparency to construction quality.
This will also help identify unacceptable trade-offs, such as where pressure to accelerate project delivery has led to unacceptable faults.
Harnessing connected data to create collective responsibility and visibility around issues management is the key to ensuring that quality keeps up with the scale and pace of modern construction.
