Quality Assurance System for Wood Framing Contractors

Published Sunday, December 31, 2000

Quality means different things to different people. We often hear terms like TQM, ISO-9000 and others to describe various aspects of quality programs in many different types of industries and organizations. Many of these programs sound either intimidating or bureaucratic. And it’s not often clear how an organization, especially a small business, can benefit from them.

For the Home Building industry, quality can also mean a variety of things, but most importantly, it represents an opportunity to improve the way we do business on a continuous basis, from the smallest construction details to the largest management decisions. It represents a fundamental change in the perceptions we all have about how we function in our daily roles.

In short, Quality is about expecting people throughout your organization and those you do business with to take responsibility for their actions and the actions that go on around them. In other words, to really act like you are on the same team. Expectations of responsible behavior require upper management to not only introduce accountability into the job and give employees the freedom to take on responsibility, but also to do whatever it takes to support them in carrying out their responsibilities.

One of the central elements to any quality management approach is to develop a way of doing business that results in a continuous cycle of self-evaluation and improvement. The system should yield measurable results in a virtually unlimited number of areas, whether through improved compliance with specifications, improved customer satisfaction, or similar areas where performance improvements are always welcome.

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