Modern, highly efficient construction methodology requires proper Quality Assurance Measures.
Good practice will also incorporate quality assurance reviews of contracting activities into their control environments. Periodic reviews of all or selected aspects of contracting can assist building professionals in assessing the extent to which their performance represents better practice and are a useful mechanism for identifying procedures and practices that warrant improvement.
Building companies often determine whether quality assurance activity is best undertaken in-house, including by internal audit units, by external parties or by a combination of both approaches.
Quality Assurance Programs.
In recent years, major construction contract works have tended to be performed pursuant to, amongst other things, Quality Assurance Programs. Quality Assurance Programs are, by nature, a structured method of the parties agreeing on procedures to test, record, certify, and if necessary, rectify, all relevant aspects of quality on a particular contract.
Accordingly, programs usually require matters such as:
- the provision of particular forms recording test results;
- the completion of such forms and signing off of test result forms by each of the parties;
- the preparation of lists of items requiring rectifications;
- the preparation of such defective works schedules of items requiring signing off by the Superintendent/Principal.
Such programs are, by their nature, preventative measures aimed at preventing the works being completed with defects. They are pro- active in nature.
Contractual Requirements to Comply with Quality.
Quality Assurance Programs have only been used in Australia, substantively, in recent years. For this reason, the major standard form contracts in Australia have, as yet, failed to embrace Quality Assurance Programs completely. To the extent that such major standard forms currently envisage the use of Quality Assurance Programs, they tend towards requirements to the effect that Quality Assurance Programs shall be complied with “if” such programs are provided for in the contract documents (i.e. the major standard forms do not require Quality Assurance Programs, merely compliance with such programs if they are provided elsewhere).
