Zero Defects IQ Test in Construction: Anyone can run a ZD program

Formal quality management certification is not a prerequisite to run a quality management program.

The next true-or-false statement from Philip B. Crosby's  Quality Is Free is “Anyone can run a ZD program.” As I mentioned in my last post, if you have already answered true or false to the ten statements, to test your understanding of [...]

Quality Is Free: Zero Defects Construction Programs IQ Test

In the book Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain: How to Manage Quality - So That It Becomes A Source of Profit for Your Business, Philip B. Crosby presents the following ten true-or-false statements, to test the reader’s understanding of the concept of Zero Defects or “ZD.” As Crosby wittingly remarks, as [...]

Enterprise Quality Management: On Non-financial Measures

Point-of-construction data feeds quality management metrics.

In The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton assert that measuring business strategy needs to be an integrated balance of both financial and non-financial measures. Generally, it is the finanicial measures that are the well-established and well-adopted metrics, relatively easy to [...]

Enterprise Quality Management: Service Quality Measurement

In the seminal book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton highlight the following seven metrics for service quality measurement in service organizations, to indicate defects in internal processes that may cause customer dissatisfaction, undermine customer retention and promote customer attrition over to competitors:

Long wait times
Inaccurate [...]

Construction Projects? Yeah, there's an app for that

Vela Mobile: iPad is here!

Its official!  The first construction application optimized for the iPad is now available on the App Store and ready for download. It's designed for use on the jobsite of virtually any kind of construction project.  Read more about the capabilities and download it to your iPad now. Check [...]

Enterprise Quality Management: Process Quality Measurement in Construction

In the seminal book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action[1], authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton highlight the following seven metrics for process quality measurement:

Process part-per-million defect rates
Yields (ratio of good items produced to good items entering the process)
Waste
Scrap
Rework
Returns
Percentage of processes under statistical process control[2]

The above seven metrics generally relate to the [...]

Balanced Scorecard Approach to Enterprise Quality Management

In the seminal book The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton emphasize a critical, but in many cases overlooked, point from the internal business process perspective. Kaplan and Norton highlight that “…the process of deriving objectives and measures for the internal-business-process represents one of the sharpest distinctions [...]

Three Ways Construction Quality Management is (and isn't) like Safety

At Vela Systems, we’ve been working with contractors and owners to move from ad-hoc “project-by-project” approaches to quality, to putting cross-project quality systems in place.  One recent example is with customer Turner Construction. You can read today’s press release or case study for the full story and details.

When talking about this with other customers and [...]

BIM for Construction and Beyond

The presentations at January’s AGC’s Winter 2010 BIMForum “Model-Based Buildings: A model’s life both during and after the project” in Phoenix covered the real-world use of BIM (Building Information Models) from the design phase through fabrication. They included CNC and an owner’s use of BIM for ongoing maintenance.  There was one particularly interesting presentation that [...]

Five Dynamics in Healthcare Construction Today

Here are five dynamics in healthcare construction today-- which may be readily apparent to design and construction professionals and healthcare owners and providers already well versed in healthcare construction.

This broad sector of the commercial construction market includes a wide array of building and facility types: hospitals, medical centers, treatment centers, outpatient facilities, nursing facilities, [...]