Abstract
This paper presents the results of two studies carried out to identify costs of quality and causes of poor quality in construction. There are three types of costs of quality: prevention costs, appraisal costs, and failure costs. The failure costs are usually regarded as avoidable and. if minimised through preventive measures, they could lead to substantial reduction in construction costs. The significant causes of non-conformances or poor quality that contribute to failure costs include: low quality of materials; lack of skilled labour; incompetent subcontractors; lack of commitment and capability of site staff; incorrect construction methods; and lack of site supervision. The paper describes how five sub-requirements of the ISO 9001:2000 standard can minimise the effects of these six causes in order to reduce costs of quality.
Highlights
The effect of poor quality on construction costs can be significant though it is usually overlooked by contractors (Abdul-Rahman, 1995)
8.6 associated with such approaches are comparatively low and previous research studies suggest that through spending 1 % more in prevention costs, the failure costs can be reduced in the order of 8 % of the construction costs (Roberts, 1991)
The failure costs are usually regarded as avoidable and if minimised through preventive measures, they could lead to substantial reduction in appraisal costs
Summary
The effect of poor quality on construction costs can be significant though it is usually overlooked by contractors (Abdul-Rahman, 1995). The quality costs for the projects were collected by personally visiting the sites and going through various cost and other record maintained by the contractors and consultants These costs were expressed as percentage values under three cost categories: (a) prevention and appraisal, (b) failure or non-conformance; and (c) failure due to construction related activities including subcontractors. Drawing on the same lines, it is possible assume that failure costs in construction can be considerably reduced by proper control of the six significant factors identified above For this purpose, these factors can be further studied in relation to a recognised quality management system such as the ISO 9 0 0 1 : 2000 standard. The other three causes, 'Incorrect construction method', 'Lack of site supervision', and 'Lack of commitment and capability of site staff are predominantly related to the culture, management, and quality system of the organizations; the contractors, have total control over them
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