Your Goals
QUALITY PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT
First Time Quality
Supporting you on your journey towards First Time Quality.
Quality Program
Improvement
Welcome to the FTQ360 Construction Quality Management maturity model.
If quality really matters, then one of your main business objectives should be to improve your Quality Management Program.
Our team here at FTQ360 has put together a maturity model which enables you to find out exactly where your quality program is, on a scale that runs from basic and professional, to advanced and expert. More importantly, we can tell you the exact steps you need to follow, in order to reach the next level.
So, wherever you are on the path towards First Time Quality excellence, we’re here to help.
1. basic
Level one
Stop putting out fires and use punchlists to help identify and fix deficiencies.
Get your program up and running quickly, with a specialist quality management system.
When you catch incomplete or incorrect work during the construction process, and promptly fix those defects before the walls are closed, then you’ll be delivering a stress-free, defect-free completed home.
Bring automation to your quality communication workflows
Streamline your communications by automatically sharing documented issues with all relevant trade partners and subcontractors To increase your efficiency even further, purge all emails, text messages, and phone calls from your daily activities and track all deficiencies in one easy-to-use platform. This way, you’ll have instant access to fully documented deficiencies with pictures, notes and reason codes.
To get your First Time Quality journey off to a flying start, we recommend automating the notifications for your subcontractor deficiency updates – thus making sure to include all priorities and due dates.
Use automation to administer your deficiency backlog
Eliminate the burden of research and follow-up by automating overdue deficiency alerts and exception reports. Use dashboards to give you instant visibility, and the control needed to efficiently manage your deficiency backlog.
For First Time Quality excellence, we also recommend that you measure the response time performance of subcontractors, and analyze trends in your deficiency counts – both by subcontractor and project.
Use simpler processes and eliminate unnecessary procedures
With a specialist cloud-based platform – like FTQ360 – that makes issue communication quick and easy, you can maintain control over your deficiencies.
Focus on achieving First Time Quality excellence – and prevent your field personnel from having to deal with a constant stream of problems, while senior management juggle one quality crisis after another. That way, you’ll improve both the profitability of the project, and customer satisfaction.
What we do
We help you stay on top of your deficiencies by eliminating unnecessary steps and automating key tasks.
Streamlined Communications
Serious software for fast and easy issue communication.
Consistent Processes
Serious software ensuring accurate inspections from the whole team.
Single Platform
A single platform for documenting and controlling deficiciencies.
2. Professional
Level two
Base your high-level quality management program on solid foundations.
Achieve control over your own quality inspections, and you’ll delight your customers.
Since most deficiencies have been encountered, you can anticipate them and eliminate them proactively. As a result, operating costs remain within budget, and quality delivered to the customer improves dramatically.
Create inspection reports that are professional-grade
Best-in-class reports, covering the full range of quality inspection activities and performance trends, will keep both the home site and the corporate management informed about the status of your quality management initiatives.
As a way of streamlining your quality management operations, you should have a range of ready-to-submit ‘online’ inspection reports that document compliance issues – ideally with pictures, measurement verficiations and observations. For all inspections across projects and home sites we also recommend compiling a full transaction history..
Advanced technology enables powerful checklist features
With the very latest technology, you can adapt any of the hundreds of templates in our Checklist Library to meet the unique demands of your inspection process. To minimize the number of repetitive inspection tasks, you can leverage a range of dynamic features designed to streamline the process. With over twenty types of inspection checkpoints, it’s possible to collect a wide array of quality data.
Plus, reason and corrective action codes as well as priority risk factors allow you to group and compile deficiency history to separate high risk issues from low risk issues, track redline mistakes, and develop training agendas.
Create a checklist template library
You can create a library of checklists – with each adapted to the specific scope of homes being built – quickly and easily.
We recommend using division of work and home building milestones as your basis for organizing home construction checklists. These should include material receiving, phase completion, community management, and safety checklists, and will assist your team by enabling them to focus on the inspection task at hand. You can also use checklists to make it easier to manage up-front engineering and design reviews.
Plan for project quality and establish controls
Planning your inspections in advance and using them to guide the inspectors will keep the process on track. Taking a proactive approach will help avoid the expensive complications that result from a missed or late inspection.
We recommend that you use real-time performance dashboards and online management reports to create Inspection Test Plans (ITP) and track the completion progress.
What we do
We help you take control of your quality program with a high-level quality management system.
Pre-loaded Checklists
Serious software with hundreds of checklists at your fingertips.
Consistent Processes
Serious software ensuring accurate inspections from the whole team.
Documented Compliance
Serious software providing the definitive proof of project compliance.
Comprehensive Quality Plans
Serious software with inspection and test plans to keep your quality program on track.
3. Advanced
Level three
Prevent defects in a systematic manner, and focus on your improvement initiatives.
Get everyone committed to building it right the first time, using a combination of safety and quality.
Take your quality management systems beyond compliance, and reduce operating costs while increasing customer satisfaction.
Dashboards and reports covering construction process deficiency
You can assess First Time Quality performance with the help of online dashboards and reports. This makes it easier to get everyone – including your construction team and subcontractors – behind the idea of building it right the first time, every time.
As a basis for giving recognition, incentives and future work assignments – and to align quality measures with customer priorities – we recommend recognizing high-quality performers. In addition, this will help to demonstrate your capabilities to potential customers.
Deficiency ranking dashboards and reports for subcontractor performance
To edge one step closer towards First Time Quality excellence, you can concentrate your improvement efforts on subcontractors with the most issues. Using ranking reports, you can identify potential problem subcontractors for individual projects, or across all projects.
FTQ360 allows you to view a subcontractor’s deficiency history, including closed and open issues. Plus you can compare multiple subcontractors within a construction category to not only view the number of defects within a given time period, but their company’s top recurring issues as well as their assigned quality score.
Safety reporting framework and safety compliance records
You can satisfy OSHA safety reporting requirements while also creating the foundation for a stellar safety program.
We recommend that you focusing on the following records:
- Observation reports
- Violation reports
- Toolbox talk records
- Incident reports
- Accident reports
- Jobsite Safety Assessments (JSAs)
- Safety Audits
Systems to reduce defects
It’s possible to systematically prevent defects, by using a suite of quality management software features and tools. You can also set the pace of improvements for each team in your company, by setting measurable defect reduction goals.
We recommend that you make company-wide measurements of defect reduction and improvement trends, increase awareness of process changes and important details using special hotspot checkpoints, and create Root Cause Reports to focus quality improvement efforts on the right issues and eliminate recurring issues altogether.
First Time Quality reports and dashboards
With online dashboards and reports, you can assess First Time Quality performance. This will assist you in getting everyone behind the concept of building it right the first time, every time.
We recommend that you use First Time Quality as a key performance metric – regardless of the size of the subcontractor, or the actual number of deficiencies – and that you identify high-quality performers as the yardstick for recognition, incentives, and the assignment of future work.
Key performance metrics allow the home builder to not only give high-risk issues, such as water intrusion or structural issues, a higher priority, but also keep track of the number of days a deficiency is adding to the build schedule for that home or the amount of money being added to the home budget because of that defect. Tracking these metrics on dashboards and reports help the quality team identify which recurring issues need to be purged from the building process immediately.
What we do
We help you implement advanced analytics and reporting solutions to reduce deficiencies and intregrate safety compliance.
Integrated Safety
Serious software with built-in safety compliance and risk reduction.
Powerful Analytics
Serious software providing insightful performance dashboards and reports.
Reduced Deficiencies
Serious software with advanced tools and functionality to proactively reduce defects.
4. Expert
Level four
Eliminating quality risks proactively empowers you to achieve first time quality, every time.
You can reduce your operating costs while providing high levels of customer satisfaction.
Clients with difficult projects will know to turn to your company – which will also project the confidence of being able to survive a downturn.
Quality, in your external stakeholder communications
You can maintain control of every aspect of your Quality Management Program, from a single, cloud-based platform.
We recommend that you focus on the following functions:
- Requests for information (RFIs)
- Non-conformance reports
- Construction Phase Completion Checklists
- Customer punchlists
- Access to project documents
- Deficiency and punchlist spreadsheets
Self-document quality and safety compliance for subcontractors
Streamline the review and approval of each completed phase in the home building process and improve quality and safety performance by documenting known risks upon completion.
We advise you to specify the pictures and data you’ll need to document compliance, to grant subcontractors tightly controlled access to your quality management systems, and to automate communications so that superintendents get notification when open deficiencies have been fixed and are ready for re-inspection.
Quality should extend to design, engineering and project administration
Your quality process can include pre-construction activities, and employ specialized design and engineering checklists to create a standardized agenda for the review of accuracy and that everything is prepared and ready to start building the home
We advise that you integrate quality performance measures and improvement processes within your company’s quality management program. You should also have field personnel report errors and omission deficiencies during construction, and tie inspection approvals to payment processing for the subcontractors. FTQ360 can help you set up an automated system that reports passed inspections to the Accounts Payable Department so they know when to release payment.
Extend quality to design, engineering and project administration
You can include pre-construction activities in your quality process and use specialized design and engineering checklists to set a standardized agenda for reviewing both accuracy and completion.
We recommend that you integrate quality performance measures and improvement processes into the company-wide quality management program, have field personnel report errors and omission deficiencies during construction, and require sign-off by multiple reviewers before final approval.
Preventing risk pre-construction
You can mitigate any risks identified in the pre-construction and preparatory meetings by adapting quality controls to the relative importance of the possible risks.
We advise you to embed drawing and specification details on checkpoints, to use dashboards and reports for evaluating total risks and actual exposure, and using weighted risk exposure values for quality and safety checkpoints.
ISO 9001 compliance
You can pass the most rigorous quality system audits with ISO9001 quality administration checklists and surveillance audits.
The FTQ360 Software Platform includes project inspection and test plans for ISO9001 administration activities, automatic posting of compliance within project quality plans, and visibility into compliance and full quality program deployment for certification auditors.
ISO 45000 safety compliance
You can pass the most rigorous safety audits with ISO45000 safety administration checklists and surveillance audits.
The FTQ360 Software Platform includes safety-specific inspection and audit plans, automatic posting of compliance with site-specific safety plans, and visibility into compliance and full quality program deployment for certification auditors.
What we do
We help you reach the pinacle of First Time Quality excellence by pro-actively eliminating quality and safety risks.
Streamlined Communications
Serious software for fast and easy issue communication.
Consistent Processes
Serious software ensuring accurate inspections from the whole team.
Documented Compliance
Serious software providing the definitive proof of project compliance.
Integrated Saftey
Serious software with built-in safety compliance and risk reduction.
Reduced Deficiencies
Serious software with advanced tools and functionality to proactively reduce defects.
How we helped Andersen
QUALITY PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT
One of the best ways to reduce costs is to reduce defects, recurring issues and rework. FTQ360 identifies recurring issues across projects and helps us to target and eliminate them – adding time and dollars to the bottom line.
Scott Freeman
Quality Manager
Andersen Construction
