Steps to Take to Uphold Your Company’s Quality Control
In the construction industry, a business earns its reputation based on its ability to execute consistent, high-quality work, job after job. Competition is fierce and the stakes are high; even a minor misstep can create a ripple effect that jeopardizes a project’s budget, timeline and/or safety. While certain setbacks are inevitable, it’s important to implement quality control measures to streamline your process and eliminate as many variables as possible. These measures extend not only to the installation work, but also to selection, delivery and inspection of materials, team communication and overall project management.
It’s not enough to develop a strong quality control process; it must be followed with vigilance, time after time. Here are a few ways our company upholds its strong commitment to quality with every project.
Team Players
The number one asset of any company is its employees. We take great care to hire personnel who exemplify our core values of growth, integrity, respect, ownership, unity and excellence. This means working exclusively with glaziers in the field, and implementing a multi-phase vetting process for hiring office workers. These phases include not just the expected interviews with potential supervisors, but also multiple assessments by colleagues within our company to deem whether a candidate is a good fit for our culture. When you have a solid team behind each project, you know there’s a mutual commitment to follow protocols and the work will be executed as professionally as possible.
As our vice president of operations in California, Bob Linford states, “quality control (QC) procedures vary from job to job and system to system.” To address the specific needs of each project, our company developed individualized QC processes involving a series of tags, tests and process checks. Several team members will usually collaborate to decide the best plan of action, and extra scrutiny goes into areas of projects that have historically caused issues.
Shop and Field
In the shop, quality control extends to every step of the fabrication process, from drawing to ordering, fabrication, assembly, material inspection and delivery. Each item is checked and double checked at every stage, and must be formally signed off for inspection by crew members. This provides a record of accountability.
Before any work begins, job sites must undergo inspections and testing to assure openings are correct and ready, and all substrates meet set standards to support and seal systems. Each round of material delivery is checked for damage upon arrival, and checked again for accuracy prior to installation. Inspections continue during installation to ensure frames, glass, panels, sealants and any other components meet and exceed requirements as well as our own.
Never Settle
Sometimes, job components don’t meet our company’s high expectations, whether at the fabrication, delivery or installation level. If this occurs, we don’t hesitate to revise or replace any item we feel is defective in any way. We will never leave a project subpar in any way. This allows for growing mutual respect with clients and building upon our relationships.
Though we’ve been refining our quality control processes for 75 years, there is always room for advancement and improvement. The QC process is always a work in progress and companies must strive to make it better all the time. It’s important to ensure the foundations we’re building upon are sound and solid.
This article originally appeared in USGlass magazine, volume 55, Issue 8, August 2020