One of the main questions to answer when setting up a quality program is whether to centralize or decentralize the team, tools, and systems. J.L. Ashford’s book, The Management of Quality in Construction, clearly establishes the difference between each. Regarding centralized quality programs, from pages 55 to 56: “Under a centralized system, these operations [quality […]
Category: Simplification
There Is No Perfect Tool
Our industry is hyper focused on tools and technology. We’re searching for the perfect tool, blaming our existing systems for inefficiencies in our operations. In Procore, if we could delete items at the project level from corporate inspection templates, our checklists would be easier to manage. If Newforma only had a better user interface, we […]
Cal Newport and Task Containment
A common complaint of the “modern quality system” or “process” is that it has too much documentation or takes up too much time. I don’t disagree. There exists a better method to managing quality that I’m implementing at my current organization, and Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, […]
Create Flexible Frameworks
An industry friend of mine recently stated: “We need to give teams the tools to take ownership.” This is such a powerful statement. Many of our processes are extremely prescriptive. As we ask our teams to “own quality” on their project, we fail to realize that an overly prescriptive quality process is exactly what prevents […]
Simplifying Our Quality Systems
How can we simplify our quality systems? Project quality plans are often diluted – spread out across multiple documents and shared locations. Even our terminology – quality management, quality assurance, quality control – is too complicated for the teams in the field installing the work. Project teams are incentivized to utilize cumbersome corporate processes, yet […]
Simplify First, Automate Last
Many organizations wait for the perfect tool to automate their systems, yet we forget that automation is not a means of simplification. Simplifying a process and automating it are two separate actions. We must simplify a process first before automation. I recently wrote about waiting for the perfect tool and task containment as a means of simplification in design […]