The impact of quality management system of contactor quality performance at a local power station in South Africa (original) (raw)

Quality Performance: The Case of Construction Projects in the Electricity Industry in Kenya

The South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2012

Pressure from the Government of Kenya to have citizens connected to electricity as a means of improving their standard of living has resulted in a focus on the electricity utilities to expand the power distribution network. Contractors have therefore been approved to expedite the process. This has, however, resulted in substandard work being done by some of the contractors. The main objective of the research is to determine the critical factors that are instrumental in the delivery of quality construction projects for the electricity industry of Kenya. The results of the research reveal that there are areas in which the electricity utilities and the associated contractors perform poorly, indicating the need to improve the quality of completed projects. OPSOMMING Druk van die regering van Kenia om sy burgers se lewenstandaard te verhoog, het aanleiding gegee tot 'n behoefte aan die vermeerdering van elektriese aansluitings. Dit het verder daartoe aanleiding gegee dat elektrisiteitsverskaffers die elektrisiteitsverspreidingsnetwerk voortdurend moes vergroot. Om die proses te verhaas, is kontrakteurs aangestel om sekere werk te doen. Dit het egter daartoe gelei dat sekere subkontrakteurs substandaard werk lewer. Die hoofdoel van die navorsing is om kritiese faktore te identifiseer wat aflewering van kwaliteit konstruksieprojekte in die elektrisiteitsindustrie van Kenia beïnvloed. Die resultate van die navorsing dui daarop dat daar areas is waar die elektrisiteitsverskaffers self asook die kontrakteurs nie na wense presteer nie. Die behoefte aan kwaliteitsverbetering in die voltooiing van projekte word geïllustreer.

CONSTRAINTS AND CHALLENGES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM) IN CONTRACTING ORGANISATION

Total Quality Management (TQM) is managing people and business processes to ensure complete customer satisfaction at every stage. As building projects get large and becoming complex, clients are requiring a higher quality standard for project delivery with lower construction cost. This study intends to assess the constraint and challenges in the implementation of TQM of construction companies. The cross-sectional research design is used for this study and the population entails construction professionals in indigenous and expatriate construction companies in Nigeria. Random sampling procedure was used to select the respondents. A total of 50 questionnaires were distributed and 30 was retrieved and used for the analysis. It gives a response rate of 60%.Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS) 17 th version is used to analyse using descriptive statistic and the Relative Importance Index(RII) of the level of importance of the factors were calculated. From the study is show that the factors affecting the implementation of TQM are management commitment factors, the role of quality department and training and education. The challenges of TQM are lack of available quality system documentation, lack of understanding of the process requirement and high cost to implement TQM. In conclusion, Nigeria construction companies do not have quality control and assurance manual that will be a guide to monitor the quality of the end products as such most projects are abandoned as a result of poor quality workmanship. It was therefore recommended that Nigeria construction companies should develop a framework for the purpose of quality standard and for them to compete with their counterpart globally.

Client satisfaction and quality management systems in contractor organizations

Building and Environment, 2006

The construction industry is predominantly project based and quality is one of the client's prime concerns in their construction projects. Many clients, especially those in the Hong Kong public sector, require their contractors to have a Quality Management System (QMS) certified under ISO9000. Also, several contractors as well as clients themselves voluntarily implemented an ISO9000based QMS in their respective organizations in order to target the various benefits perceived from such initiative. It was considered timely and worthwhile to explore the effectiveness of ISO9000-based QMSs in the Hong Kong. This paper portrays the key findings from a focused study that relate to the client satisfaction aspects from implementation of the ISO9000-based QMSs in the contractor organizations. r

OVERSEEING QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRIES

Construction industry plays an vital part in the advancement of any nation. The advancement of development industry utilizes upon the character of construction projects The key with this thesis to provide perfection in consumer loyalty through ceaseless upgrades of items and procedures by the aggregate inclusion and devotion of each person who's in just about any capacity part of that process. With the arrival of latest Quality management standard ISO 9001:2000, those in Construction industry, like organizations in other sectors, have experienced to review and seek their ongoing quality management to see what changes have needed to please this standard. Therefore many construction organizations have now transformed their QMSs to generally meet certain requirements of ISO 9001:2000. Some organizations see this as making costly changes to the method by which the handle and others look it as a means of improvising their business. Today achieving customer care is most significant objective of the organizations and quality management (QM) is the greatest ways to manage make this happen target. Indian organizations attended to recognize that, to be able to stay competitive, a noticeable difference in organizational quality performance is necessary. Indian companies are viewing ISO 9000 while the kick off point for total quality management since it takes establishing of and executing an administration framework that ensures consistent products and services at a specific degree of quality. By the conclusion of the season 2013, 37,958 and 3,281 associations in India had embraced ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 respectively. However, the vast literature on QM hails from the experiences in the industrialized world. Several studies on QM have already been conducted, first in developed countries (e.g., United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and Canada) and later in developing countries (e.g.,

The Extent of Adoption of Quality Management Practices in the Construction Lifecycle by Contractors of State-Owned Enterprises

EPALLI, 2024

This study examined the quality management practices implemented by contractors involved in infrastructure development, specifically focusing on the various stages of the construction lifecycle such as feasibility, design, and construction, except the final phase, commissioning. A conceptual framework was developed to facilitate the implementation of quality management practices, specifically within areas of quality planning, quality control, and quality assurance. The quantitative method using a survey questionnaire has gathered the perspectives from contractors engaged in South African infrastructure projects. Data was collected from a representative subset sourced from the National Treasury Database, yielding 39 respondents. Hypothesis 1 found significant differences in practice adoption across construction stages. Hypothesis 2 revealed a strong positive correlation between quality planning and quality assurance, as well as between quality control and quality assurance, emphasizing their interconnection. The study was limited to discussing the contractors' who were employed by Eskom, a single state-owned corporation, and has restricted the emphasis on all the aspects of quality management practices in the construction industry. The results from Design Stages of Construction Projects revealed some significant differences between the opinions regarding the practice adoption across construction stages along with the distinction in quality planning predominantly in the design and construction phases

QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

TO address quality problems and their associated costs, the construction industry must pursue and implement innovative quality-management organizations and techniques. This paper presents the findings of a research project conducted to identify attributes of effective quality-management systems in the construction industry. The objectives were met through an extensive literature review and in-depth interviews with 142 engineering, construction, quality, and procurement personnel from 19 owner and contractor firms involved in heavy industrial , manufacturing, and commercial construction. The emergence of total quality management (TQM) applications in the construction industry was a significant finding of the interviews. The results indicate that substantial improvements in meeting quality requirements can be achieved by the use of TQM in the construction industry. Implementation techniques and attributes of effective quality-management systems were identified and categorized.

International Journal of Engineering Sciences & Management Quality Management Practices and Customer Satisfaction Antecedents in Government Construction Projects

2014

The study investigated the effect of quality management practices (QMP) on customer satisfaction antecedents (CSA). The survey and correlational research designs were adopted for this study and mean, standard deviation and linear regression analysis were employed to analyse the data obtained. Random sampling was used to select the subjects. Two sections of a researcher designed instrument were used for data collection namely Quality management practices questionnaire (QMPQ) and Customer satisfaction antecedent's questionnaire (CSAQ). These measured the perception of management practices that affect the quality of the finished construction projects and the antecedents of customer satisfaction when engaging in construction projects respectively. The reliability indices of the instruments were found to be 0.71 and 0.83 for QMPQ and CSAQ respectively. Whereas the knowledge of quality management practices that influences customer satisfaction was above average, provision of skill development trainings, use of professional experts as well as adoption of international best practices were found to greatly enhance customer satisfaction. Also, there existed a strong positive and significant relationship between QMP and CSA. It was recommended among others that there is a dire need to maintain a high level of quality management practices for a an improved customer satisfaction

QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN CONSTRUCTION

This paper describes the Quality Management System (QMS) concept and its application in the construction industry. A misunderstanding among the construction players on the QMS concept has become the stumbling block for its successful implementation. QMS could be implemented either at the company level or at the project level. The researches on the company-based QMS in construction can be considered as comprehensive in view of the various aspects of implementation have been studied. While many studies have been done on the company-based QMS, study on the project-based QMS is lagging behind. Notwithstanding the claims that the construction organisations enjoyed the benefits and advantages of being an ISO 9000 certified are literally proven, the main objective of QMS implementation namely the achievement of customer satisfaction in the construction projects is still at large. At the project level, QMS requires Project Quality Plan (PQP) as part of the system. PQP is also not well understood by the industry players and consequently the implementation of PQP faces a lot of problems. The significant information to be considered in developing, implementing and maintaining the PQP are the project policy and objectives, the process, the process owners and the work procedures. PQP could be developed either individually for each party of the project or as an integrated documents for all parties of the project team. 1. INTRODUCTION For the past decade, the Malaysian construction sector has been going through a radical change driven by the (ISO) quality policy of the Malaysian government. Recently, the number of contractors obtaining certification of ISO 9000 Quality Management System (QMS) is ever increasing. However, this progress is seemed to be a drastic response to the constant pressure and reminder made by the Ministry of Works and quality awareness and Do It Yourself (DIY) programs organized by the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB). However, with insufficient experience on ISO quality implementation within the Malaysian environment, the construction participants are staggered with several performance-related problems. The pressure also comes from the ongoing process of economic globalisation. Experiences learned from other countries such as United Kingdom, Singapore and Hong Kong revealed that QMS implementation was very encouraging at the initial stage but over a time period became burdensome to all parties involved if the right approaches were not adopted (Giles R. 1997, Chong 1994, Kam and Tang 1997, Low and Goh 1994). In the United Kingdom, some of the construction industry clients made it compulsory that the contractors implement ISO quality system in their organizations to qualify for participating in the bids (Giles, 1997). As a result, a tremendous impact was observed with more and more contractors seeking for ISO certification. Consequently, marketing and customers' insistence have become the key factors driving the ISO implementation, which are generally short-lived (Pateman 1994). The quality consultants might further worsen the situation as many of them are not from the construction background, hence do not understand the construction process (Giles, 1997). The organisations will normally trap in the vicious circle of compliance that creates lack of flexibility, emphasis on bureaucracy and paperwork and deficiency in quality improvement (Karapetrovic 1999). In addition, resistance to change in implementing the new system will create a chaotic situation (Al-Nakeeb and Mustapha 1994). As a result the implementation of the ISO system will not earn benefit to the company and neither will bring satisfaction to the customer. 2. OBJECTIVES This paper aims to explain the concept of QMS and PQP in the construction industry as follows: Quality Management System (QMS) in construction i. Company based QMS ii. Project based QMS Project Quality Plan (PQP) in construction i. Individual PQP ii. Integrated PQP 3. QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IN CONSTRUCTION ISO 8402, the vocabulary of quality defined quality management as " all activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives and responsibilities, and implement them by means such as quality planning, quality control, quality assurance and quality improvement, within the quality system ". Meanwhile, the definition of quality system according to ISO 8402 is " the organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures and resources needed to implement quality management ". Combining the definitions of 'quality system' and 'quality management' thus concludes that QMS is the interaction of people, processes and documentation to meet both customers' stated and implied needs. The result would be a reduction in inefficiencies and waste, improved work practices, increased morale and the opportunity for a greater market share. All these benefits are achieved through the implementation of QMS which ones should perceive it as a wide-scale failure prevention programme that will lead to costs savings.