This is puzzling pretty much everyone in construction and it has historically been confusing in contracts, in procedures and even in regular meetings across the industry and even on a project level.
The main reason is that all of them are deemed as extremely negative elements in a project.
I totally understand this to be honest, especially when there is a blaming culture in a company but the main problem is that it’s only by recording, analyzing and monitoring the nonconformances, that improvement becomes reality.
Which one would you trust the most?
Project A: 0 NCRs are raised throughout the project’s lifecycle
Project B: 10000 NCRs are raised, recorded and analyzed during the project’s lifecycle
I can tell you that I am more confident on Project B meeting the Client’s, Design and any other statutory requirements.
At least…someone has been checking compliance in Project B.
The issue with the terminology, though, is not helping either.
From one hand, we have the QSs and the legal teams that have to deal with contract defects and on the other hand we have to comply with the ISO 9001 terminology.
I still haven’t figured out how to deal with this, because there are so many incompatibilities between contracts and ISO 9001 nowadays and the main reason behind this is that Quality stuff are never part of contracts management or creation so the language is completely different.
How are you dealing with this?