Description:

This one day course on Quality Awareness covers an important project skill.

Solutions have been found and implemented extremely well in manufacturing and the service industry, but in construction that quality can be very illusive. This course is not about ISO or the many other standards which are available today. Instead, this course addresses the issues related to project management in construction which have so far frustrated any real attempt to manage quality. And it looks at the essential differences between the successful management of quality in some industries and the lack of success in others.

The crucial understanding of precisely how the deliverables will benefit the business based upon the needs which drive the project, and how the project will develop those deliverables in order to realise the benefits are at the root of this course.

We judge the success of projects today by a simple assessment of the deliverables in terms of time, cost and quality. Projects are complex endeavors with more control pressure on certain aspects of the process, such as time and cost, which may easily conflict with the quality objective.

Whilst we usually monitor projects based on the more available project objectives of time and cost, the success criteria of projects set by the business at the outset are more often associated with quality. Once the project is complete and the deliverables are handed over to the business, the cost and time project objectives quickly lose significance whilst the quality objective rapidly gains focus, particularly in relation to precise suitability and the cost of maintenance.

The course will not burden you with lots of talk of quality control. We know from experience that it does not seem actionable. We will look at the results of endeavour over decades and seek real life solutions. Quality management is an essential project skill and your project success will depend on quality awareness.

An Attendance Certificate will be provided at the end of this skill course.

Vital Benefits:

A practical understanding of how quality can be achieved in the complex environment of a project is crucial to the real success of a project. Hoping for the best is not a practical solution and so better solutions are required. An understanding of why quality in some industries is so illusive is essential if we are to recognise how best to achieve the quality the client is relying on. This course provides the following vital benefits:

• A clear understanding of the practicalities of creating quality in construction projects
• An understanding of the creation of quality
• An understanding of how quality can be accommodated in projects
• Practical means to measure the ability to create quality before it is created
• A template for the future

Objectives:

The course will provide a clear understanding of the need to focus management planning and performance monitoring on performance measurement, which can be as easily mapped to quality as to time and budget, in order to meet the success criteria set by the client at the outset. In this course, it is our objectives to provide:

• An understanding of the essential principles of quality in project management
• An understanding of the practical environment which controls quality
• An understanding of who should be doing what - practically
• An understanding of why things do not work as expected and what can be done
• An understanding of the quality process in relation to complex project environments
• An understanding of the working environment in which quality is created

Topics:

The course covers the following topics:

• A short history of quality and how it succeeds in some industries and not in others
• Taylor, Deming, Shewhart, Juran, Crosby, Ishikawa, and Tagushi
• Paradigms: Six Sigma, ISO 9000, EFQM, the elements and more
• A plan to establish the real client’s requirements
• Many tools to learn
• Understanding processes and how to measure them
• The tools the project manager needs: force field analysis, brainstorming, affinity diagrams, nominal group techniques, compliance matrix, and more
• An overview of the day’s work with an emphasis on practicality

Who to Attend:

This course is intended for anyone who has an interest in quality management on projects and wants to find better solutions or simply to improve their understanding. The course includes a mixture of sessions including lectures/discussions and individual/syndicate exercises. Issues addressed will include conceptual aspects of quality awareness, practical tools and techniques. We would recommend it to:

• The client staff
• The project managers
• The project staff
• Line managers
• The professional services teams
• The senior supply chain managers
• Everyone who wants to know more about quality
• Anyone who sees project management as a career