3 Ways to Reduce Rework with Construction Quality Control

In our last post about this topic, we showed you how a proactive construction quality control plan can reduce construction rework, and keep you from repeating the same mistakes from project to project.

The great news is that the same plan can help you save up to 20% on overall construction costs.

To get these benefits, you need to consistently anticipate, test, and prevent possible errors, which requires a systematic approach to quality control. In other words, it requires a proactive construction quality control plan.

To accomplish this, everyone on the project must be able to report and access the most up-to-date information regardless of whether they are on the site or in the office. That means you’re going to have to move away from the good old fashioned paper plans we’ve all loved and hated.

Instead, you’ll need to move to a construction project management app. Construction project management apps make it possible to store all your data in the cloud, and make it available on demand via iPad or other mobile device just as easily as from a desktop in the office. This also enables real-time communication between field and office.

The ability to get projects done faster, safer, and more accurately at a lower cost makes the transition worth the effort.

And if you really want to get the most out of your transition away from paper? Try these 3 pro tips.

(Plus, BONUS: find out how IMCO Construction completed a major project ahead of schedule and nearly error-free despite a remote location, high complexity, and an unexpected natural disaster).

1: Get Collaborative

If there’s a gap between plan and actual performance on your projects, you’re not alone. It’s a common problem. Often, design teams create plans without input from the build team, and the resulting plan fails to take into consideration site conditions, availability of materials, and general constructability.

This leads a lot of headaches and frustration for both teams. Contractors expend time, money, and energy making impractical plans work in the field, and requesting changes to the design in order to make them work. Designers expend time, money, and energy responding to requests for changes in design.

And, worst of all, design issues lead to rework.

Time to completion goes up. Costs go up. Profit margins go down down down.

The answer to these problems is a collaborative design and construction environment.

2. Implement Lean Practices

Lean construction sounds like a high and lofty goal, only for those with the time and money to invest in fancy programs.

But at its simplest, lean construction just means learning from your mistakes and making every project better than the one before.

To implement lean practices on your project, create a culture of continuous improvement. You’ll need a platform that embraces collaboration and allows you to track mistakes, solutions, and best practices so that you can apply them on your next job.

When you build learning into your system, every project will run more smoothly–and profitably–than the one before.

Creating a culture of continuous improvement, combined with a platform that embraces collaboration and makes it easy for stakeholders to ensure they’re working with the most up-to-date information will help ensure that the same issues do not occur twice.

3. Scrap Paper and Take Advantage of the Cloud

Ultimately, modern construction quality control simply cannot take place on paper. It is too cumbersome, difficult to manage, and limits real-time communication and collaboration.

You wouldn’t build a skyscraper with a stone hammer. And you shouldn’t be constructing your next project with paper documents, either.

The right tools include:

✔️  Anytime, anywhere access to information & collaboration tools

✔️  Dynamic, mobile checklist inspection capability with reporting

✔️ Collaborative production planning tools with built-in completion tracking

✔️  Secure project documentation with version control and user level access permissions

IMCO Construction Overcomes the Odds for an On-Time On-Budget Completion

What do you get when you combine a remote location with high complexity, and mix in a natural disaster?

Well, in most cases what you get is chaos. But not if you’re IMCO Construction. Thanks to proactive construction quality control and the right tools, IMCO overcame all of these obstacles to produce an on-time, on-budget project for Washington State.

Imaging of IMCO's Holden Mine Water Treatment Plant project

Despite a wildfire that caused major complications, IMCO:

• Shaved up to 15% off the project schedule. By eliminating traditional surveying, enabling off-site prefabrication, speeding construction, and reducing rework and downtime.

• Completed 1.5 years worth of work in 8 months. Tools like BIM 360 Glue and BIM 360 Field allowed IMCO to be agile, collaborate more closely and work much more efficiently, get projects done faster.

• Only 1 (small) error for the entire project. Being paper-free and using iPads in the field ensured that the team had the latest versions of the plans (which were changing daily), were able to coordinate clashes quickly, and could coordinate across disciplines via the same model. This gave the project team the confidence to proceed since they knew they had a complete (versus siloed) picture of the project.

• Smooth handover to the owner.  Because of the level of insight provided by the 3D model used in the construction phase, operations and maintenance will not only be easier, but it will be conducted by IMCO on an ongoing basis.  

Putting these best practices into your construction practice takes the gamble out of rework budgets, and puts you in control of your work plan. All-in-one, collaborative, cloud-based platforms like BIM 360 provide all of these capabilities and more.   

Check out what BIM 360 can do for your construction project team!

Got construction quality control tips of your own?

Post them in the comments below!!