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Project quality and the project manager
Quality assurance
Project quality and the project manager Sanford I Heisler
Although it is automatically accepted in the project management field that the project manager is‘ responsible for ensuring that targets concerning cost and time are met, the responsibility of the project manager for the quality of the project is a more subtle factor. The ways in which the quality of a project can be viewed and measured are discussed, and the many subjective factors involved are considered.
measured with some degree of accuracy, quantifying the ‘quality’ of a project is more difficult. Quality is more than mere performance and includes many factors subjective in nature. Factors such as client satisfaction, reduced maintenance, ease of constructability (which should reflect itself in lower capital cost and a shorter schedule), support to purchaser, avoidance of premature equipment failure, maintainability, etc. all fall into this category.
Keywords: project management, quality assurance, quality programmes, performance, quality measurement, construction management
USE OF QUALITY PROGRAMMES
As anyone involved in the industry knows, the project manager is responsible for the performance of the project with respect to the goals of cost and schedule. Neither cost nor schedule overruns can be tolerated, not merely for the difficulty of funding the overruns, but also for the loss of completion bonuses, the risk of adverse foreign currency exchange rate changes and, most importantly, the possibility of abandonment of the project if cost and schedule targets cannot be achieved. Of equal importance, but a more subtle factor, is the responsibility of the project manager for the quality of the project. Whether explicitly stated or not, as the leader of the project, the project manager is ultimately responsible for the quality - the ‘fitness’ - of the project. Quality performance includes satisfactory cost and schedule performance as well as the more narrow definition of quality as is often applied. The quality of the project can thus be viewed on two levels, cost and schedule or ‘general quality’ and the more specific level of operational or functional compliance - quality in the more usual sense. While cost and schedule aspects can be quantified and thus
Quality programmes are instituted to assure predictability of results and ultimately to provide a basis for management control. With a suitable quality programme, sufficient discipline is introduced into the process to assure that the next time the activity is performed, the results will be the same. Documentation will be produced which will provide confirmation of the significant in-process and final results to assure that the process is under control and repeatable. The quality programme and its documentation need not, and should not, be more extensive than necessary. The purpose of the quality programme is not the generation of paper but rather the assurance that the product is what was specified. The documentation and the procedures are merely a means to an end - they are not an end in and of themselves. The benefits of a quality programme are apparent in the reduction of variability in project work operations, identification of whether work is conforming and within acceptable limits, cost reduction due to reduced scrap, waste and rework, better predictability of costs and in our increasingly litigious society the ability to readily produce documentary evidence that the project was prudently managed. QUALITY
Heisler Associates, 2701, USA
851 Arcturus
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
Circle,
Foster
City,
CA 94404
0263-7863/90/03013345
PRINCIPLES
The following are some key quality the foundation of any appropriate
@ 1990 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
principles which are programme.
133
Quality assurance A suitable quality organization and programme need to be established. Activities affecting quality must be planned and controlled to assure predictability. Specificity of requirements and acceptance criteria are required. Cause determination of quality deviations is needed. Loop closing of deviations is necessary. Reviews of the effectiveness of the quality programme are essential. QUALITY
RELATIONSHIPS
Figure 1 plots cost increase against the achievement of higher levels of quality. With increased levels of quality, the cost increases dramatically and exponentially and approaches, but never reaches the right axis, i.e. 100% quality, or zero defects. The vertical axis, cost, can be measured in absolute terms such as dollars while the horizontal axis can be measured in statistical terms: e.g. number of problems per thousand, number of rejects per 100 000, etc. Terms such as ‘fitness for use’, ‘suitable for the service intended’ convey a general feeling but are not suitable for measurement; hence for this curve we define the horizontal axis as ‘conformance to requirements’. When purchasing major equipment, the manufac-
turer’s production and quality control systems will provide some level of assurance which he deems appropriate, the cost for these being included in the purchase price. Where a purchaser asks for a higher level of assurance, added inspections and tests may be required. The sum of the initial equipment cost and these added costs is represented by the ‘total initial cost’ curve. Other costs, however, may also be present - these include downtime, delays etc. This curve has the opposite shape with high cost exposure for low quality and decreasing cost for higher quality. The sum of these two curves, the ‘total cost’ curve, is bathtub shaped and represents the true costs to which the owner is exposed. While it may be difficult to quantify exactly where one is on this total curve, it is better to err on the side of higher rather than lower quality, if only for reduced economic risk. Figure 2 compares the good vendor with the poor vendor. While the quoted price may be lower, if the Case ‘A’ quality level is required, the total cost to the owner will be higher. The inability to inspect quality into the work is apparent in Case ‘B’ where no matter how much is spent on inspection, the manufacturing systems of the poor vendor cannot achieve the required level. Thus the poor vendor cannot be considered a viable supplier for this required quality level.
Poor Vendor
Good Vendor
cost
$
Case “A”
Total Initial Cost ‘urchase
,rrf
NIIIII
I*t
Total Initial Cost (Eqpt. & Inspection Costs) 90%+
-
Figure 1. Level of assurance of quality
134
100%
90%+
100%
-
Figure 2. Level of assurance of quality
Project
Management
Quality assurance process is controlled, the smaller the variance and the tighter the standard curve. From the mathematical relationships, it is possible to predict the characteristics of the entire population from a sample. This, together with precalculated values of pass/fail for various lot sizes and desired levels of assurance provide a set of tools that do away with lengthy mathematical calculations and permit relatively untrained people to perform lot acceptance with a high degree of confidence. (See Figure 4). Pareto diagrams (frequency distributions) (see Figure 5) are a simple but powerful diagnostic tool. They are based on the principle that a few causes lead to most of the problems. Construction of a diagram is easy and provides a rapid way of identifying those causes with the largest number of events as well as presenting the data for quick identification and understanding. Control charts (see Figure 6) areuseful for controlling multiple repetitive tasks, and the X, R chart which uses a group average and the variation or range of values is both quick and easy to use.
Figure 3 shows a time history of verification of equipment characteristics which indicates that because of the variety of activities, verifications take place throughout the time frame and thus not all characteristics need to be verified early. Concurrent with this, however, is the increase in the value of time. Given these two factors, it is essential to perform the critical verifications early so as not to impact the critical path.
QUALITY
MEASUREMENT
There are several quality measurement tools which are easy to use and have proven to be particularly useful: l l l l
standard deviation and kurtosis. sampling and acceptance methods, Pareto distribution, control charts, _%and R.
In any production process, variations will occur. These variations arrange themselves in a standard distribution with fixed mathematical relationships between their variance and the size of the population included. The measure of this variation or tightness of the standard distribution curve is called ‘kurtosis’ and indicates the amount of variance from the mean. The tighter the
EXAMPLES
Construction While
management
the principles
Manufacturers Testing-----t & Inspection nnwnnb
1
of quality
discussed
earlier
apply
i_.Construction Activities \ I. I\
T+bEekeM~
I
wsit
Witness & Hold Points
1 Shlpment 1
Inspection
l Construction
1 I, v= Verification
by Engineer/Constructor
0=
Construction Completion -I Testing
I
*Start
i pstem~ Testing I
Begin f I Operation
i 1
Up Activities-
Value of Time-Max
Other Verifications
Figure 3. Continuum of equipment verification
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
135
Quality assurance
Figure 4. Normal curve
RLKMAOHCF Event Type
Figure 5. Frequency
diagram
to construction management activities, several of them have more significance than others. Design control is fundamental and its loss can result in major problems, such as different revisions of the same drawing in use, incorrect criteria applied etc. With fast track projects, where a single company provides both design and construction services, this can be a major risk. Adequate field inspection and signoff are necessary to
136
control critical or high-cost activities and provide accountability. Controlling testing of field construction activities is essential. X-ray of welds and hydrostatic testing of piping are two examples. Receipt inspection of materials is an economic way to assure adequacy of bulk items such as rebar, cement, pipe fittings, fasteners, etc. Certified Material Test Reports (CMTR), and Certificates of Compliance (COC) provide evidence of supplier compliance, with CMTRs having a higher level of confidence. While it is fundamental that the organization concerned is responsible for the quality of its work, someone in the field at a sufficiently high level and independent of that organization, needs to be charged with the day to day responsibility to overview the work. This person needs to be given sufficient independence and access to the project manager to provide an independent overview and evaluation function. Selection of the right person for this is essential. Experience, balance, technical knowledge, people skills, and the ability to separate the important from the trivial are required traits. Overall, a quality programme needs to be established. The programme must be carefully written to assist the project manager in discharging his duties and should not become an end in itself. It must be reviewed and accepted by all parties to ensure that it is practical before it is implemented.
Engineering Several techniques to assure high quality of engineering are well proven; these include the use of expert reviews, oversight panels, review boards, etc. Checking and review of design and calculations during implementation is important and in some instances modelling may be necessary to predict dynamic performance.
Project
Management
Quality assurance Procurement
l
While it is possible to provide extensive overviews and inspections of purchased equipment, other methods described earlier should be considered. In any case, a planned, tailored programme of inspections and tests should be developed and implemented. For significant supplier tests, representatives of the purchaser should be present to assure adequacy.
CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, the fundamental ments of any quality programme in mind.
purposes and requireshould be kept clearly
Use common sense - the programme is intended to help and to move the project forward. It is not, and should not become an end in itself. The requirements of the programme and its implementation should fit the project, the degree of risk and complexity involved and, of course, the consequence of failure.
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
Do not overcommit - the programme should hold the producers or organization carrying out the project to standards or levels of performance which are realistic and practical. There is no sense in calling for a higher level than is functionally necessary, as it merely increases project cost without a concurrent increase in performance or value. Stanford Heisler has 27 years’ design, field engineeringandproject management experience in the power, mining, industrial and aerospace fields, and 10 years’ experience as a quality assurance manager in the power industry. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley and has done graduate work in nuclear power, engineering and industrial management and construction planning and management. He holds guest lectureships in a number of US and overseas universities.
137
Project quality and the project manager Sanford I Heisler
Although it is automatically accepted in the project management field that the project manager is‘ responsible for ensuring that targets concerning cost and time are met, the responsibility of the project manager for the quality of the project is a more subtle factor. The ways in which the quality of a project can be viewed and measured are discussed, and the many subjective factors involved are considered.
measured with some degree of accuracy, quantifying the ‘quality’ of a project is more difficult. Quality is more than mere performance and includes many factors subjective in nature. Factors such as client satisfaction, reduced maintenance, ease of constructability (which should reflect itself in lower capital cost and a shorter schedule), support to purchaser, avoidance of premature equipment failure, maintainability, etc. all fall into this category.
Keywords: project management, quality assurance, quality programmes, performance, quality measurement, construction management
USE OF QUALITY PROGRAMMES
As anyone involved in the industry knows, the project manager is responsible for the performance of the project with respect to the goals of cost and schedule. Neither cost nor schedule overruns can be tolerated, not merely for the difficulty of funding the overruns, but also for the loss of completion bonuses, the risk of adverse foreign currency exchange rate changes and, most importantly, the possibility of abandonment of the project if cost and schedule targets cannot be achieved. Of equal importance, but a more subtle factor, is the responsibility of the project manager for the quality of the project. Whether explicitly stated or not, as the leader of the project, the project manager is ultimately responsible for the quality - the ‘fitness’ - of the project. Quality performance includes satisfactory cost and schedule performance as well as the more narrow definition of quality as is often applied. The quality of the project can thus be viewed on two levels, cost and schedule or ‘general quality’ and the more specific level of operational or functional compliance - quality in the more usual sense. While cost and schedule aspects can be quantified and thus
Quality programmes are instituted to assure predictability of results and ultimately to provide a basis for management control. With a suitable quality programme, sufficient discipline is introduced into the process to assure that the next time the activity is performed, the results will be the same. Documentation will be produced which will provide confirmation of the significant in-process and final results to assure that the process is under control and repeatable. The quality programme and its documentation need not, and should not, be more extensive than necessary. The purpose of the quality programme is not the generation of paper but rather the assurance that the product is what was specified. The documentation and the procedures are merely a means to an end - they are not an end in and of themselves. The benefits of a quality programme are apparent in the reduction of variability in project work operations, identification of whether work is conforming and within acceptable limits, cost reduction due to reduced scrap, waste and rework, better predictability of costs and in our increasingly litigious society the ability to readily produce documentary evidence that the project was prudently managed. QUALITY
Heisler Associates, 2701, USA
851 Arcturus
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
Circle,
Foster
City,
CA 94404
0263-7863/90/03013345
PRINCIPLES
The following are some key quality the foundation of any appropriate
@ 1990 Butterworth-Heinemann
Ltd
principles which are programme.
133
Quality assurance A suitable quality organization and programme need to be established. Activities affecting quality must be planned and controlled to assure predictability. Specificity of requirements and acceptance criteria are required. Cause determination of quality deviations is needed. Loop closing of deviations is necessary. Reviews of the effectiveness of the quality programme are essential. QUALITY
RELATIONSHIPS
Figure 1 plots cost increase against the achievement of higher levels of quality. With increased levels of quality, the cost increases dramatically and exponentially and approaches, but never reaches the right axis, i.e. 100% quality, or zero defects. The vertical axis, cost, can be measured in absolute terms such as dollars while the horizontal axis can be measured in statistical terms: e.g. number of problems per thousand, number of rejects per 100 000, etc. Terms such as ‘fitness for use’, ‘suitable for the service intended’ convey a general feeling but are not suitable for measurement; hence for this curve we define the horizontal axis as ‘conformance to requirements’. When purchasing major equipment, the manufac-
turer’s production and quality control systems will provide some level of assurance which he deems appropriate, the cost for these being included in the purchase price. Where a purchaser asks for a higher level of assurance, added inspections and tests may be required. The sum of the initial equipment cost and these added costs is represented by the ‘total initial cost’ curve. Other costs, however, may also be present - these include downtime, delays etc. This curve has the opposite shape with high cost exposure for low quality and decreasing cost for higher quality. The sum of these two curves, the ‘total cost’ curve, is bathtub shaped and represents the true costs to which the owner is exposed. While it may be difficult to quantify exactly where one is on this total curve, it is better to err on the side of higher rather than lower quality, if only for reduced economic risk. Figure 2 compares the good vendor with the poor vendor. While the quoted price may be lower, if the Case ‘A’ quality level is required, the total cost to the owner will be higher. The inability to inspect quality into the work is apparent in Case ‘B’ where no matter how much is spent on inspection, the manufacturing systems of the poor vendor cannot achieve the required level. Thus the poor vendor cannot be considered a viable supplier for this required quality level.
Poor Vendor
Good Vendor
cost
$
Case “A”
Total Initial Cost ‘urchase
,rrf
NIIIII
I*t
Total Initial Cost (Eqpt. & Inspection Costs) 90%+
-
Figure 1. Level of assurance of quality
134
100%
90%+
100%
-
Figure 2. Level of assurance of quality
Project
Management
Quality assurance process is controlled, the smaller the variance and the tighter the standard curve. From the mathematical relationships, it is possible to predict the characteristics of the entire population from a sample. This, together with precalculated values of pass/fail for various lot sizes and desired levels of assurance provide a set of tools that do away with lengthy mathematical calculations and permit relatively untrained people to perform lot acceptance with a high degree of confidence. (See Figure 4). Pareto diagrams (frequency distributions) (see Figure 5) are a simple but powerful diagnostic tool. They are based on the principle that a few causes lead to most of the problems. Construction of a diagram is easy and provides a rapid way of identifying those causes with the largest number of events as well as presenting the data for quick identification and understanding. Control charts (see Figure 6) areuseful for controlling multiple repetitive tasks, and the X, R chart which uses a group average and the variation or range of values is both quick and easy to use.
Figure 3 shows a time history of verification of equipment characteristics which indicates that because of the variety of activities, verifications take place throughout the time frame and thus not all characteristics need to be verified early. Concurrent with this, however, is the increase in the value of time. Given these two factors, it is essential to perform the critical verifications early so as not to impact the critical path.
QUALITY
MEASUREMENT
There are several quality measurement tools which are easy to use and have proven to be particularly useful: l l l l
standard deviation and kurtosis. sampling and acceptance methods, Pareto distribution, control charts, _%and R.
In any production process, variations will occur. These variations arrange themselves in a standard distribution with fixed mathematical relationships between their variance and the size of the population included. The measure of this variation or tightness of the standard distribution curve is called ‘kurtosis’ and indicates the amount of variance from the mean. The tighter the
EXAMPLES
Construction While
management
the principles
Manufacturers Testing-----t & Inspection nnwnnb
1
of quality
discussed
earlier
apply
i_.Construction Activities \ I. I\
T+bEekeM~
I
wsit
Witness & Hold Points
1 Shlpment 1
Inspection
l Construction
1 I, v= Verification
by Engineer/Constructor
0=
Construction Completion -I Testing
I
*Start
i pstem~ Testing I
Begin f I Operation
i 1
Up Activities-
Value of Time-Max
Other Verifications
Figure 3. Continuum of equipment verification
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
135
Quality assurance
Figure 4. Normal curve
RLKMAOHCF Event Type
Figure 5. Frequency
diagram
to construction management activities, several of them have more significance than others. Design control is fundamental and its loss can result in major problems, such as different revisions of the same drawing in use, incorrect criteria applied etc. With fast track projects, where a single company provides both design and construction services, this can be a major risk. Adequate field inspection and signoff are necessary to
136
control critical or high-cost activities and provide accountability. Controlling testing of field construction activities is essential. X-ray of welds and hydrostatic testing of piping are two examples. Receipt inspection of materials is an economic way to assure adequacy of bulk items such as rebar, cement, pipe fittings, fasteners, etc. Certified Material Test Reports (CMTR), and Certificates of Compliance (COC) provide evidence of supplier compliance, with CMTRs having a higher level of confidence. While it is fundamental that the organization concerned is responsible for the quality of its work, someone in the field at a sufficiently high level and independent of that organization, needs to be charged with the day to day responsibility to overview the work. This person needs to be given sufficient independence and access to the project manager to provide an independent overview and evaluation function. Selection of the right person for this is essential. Experience, balance, technical knowledge, people skills, and the ability to separate the important from the trivial are required traits. Overall, a quality programme needs to be established. The programme must be carefully written to assist the project manager in discharging his duties and should not become an end in itself. It must be reviewed and accepted by all parties to ensure that it is practical before it is implemented.
Engineering Several techniques to assure high quality of engineering are well proven; these include the use of expert reviews, oversight panels, review boards, etc. Checking and review of design and calculations during implementation is important and in some instances modelling may be necessary to predict dynamic performance.
Project
Management
Quality assurance Procurement
l
While it is possible to provide extensive overviews and inspections of purchased equipment, other methods described earlier should be considered. In any case, a planned, tailored programme of inspections and tests should be developed and implemented. For significant supplier tests, representatives of the purchaser should be present to assure adequacy.
CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, the fundamental ments of any quality programme in mind.
purposes and requireshould be kept clearly
Use common sense - the programme is intended to help and to move the project forward. It is not, and should not become an end in itself. The requirements of the programme and its implementation should fit the project, the degree of risk and complexity involved and, of course, the consequence of failure.
Vol 8 No 3 August
1990
Do not overcommit - the programme should hold the producers or organization carrying out the project to standards or levels of performance which are realistic and practical. There is no sense in calling for a higher level than is functionally necessary, as it merely increases project cost without a concurrent increase in performance or value. Stanford Heisler has 27 years’ design, field engineeringandproject management experience in the power, mining, industrial and aerospace fields, and 10 years’ experience as a quality assurance manager in the power industry. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley and has done graduate work in nuclear power, engineering and industrial management and construction planning and management. He holds guest lectureships in a number of US and overseas universities.
137