Quality management of Crossrail can be called comprehensive for several reasons. First, the company manages quality on the organizational level, ensuring constant internal audits, tests, and incorporation of quality plans. Second, the company manages quality on a bigger scope, which implies “compliance with legislation, regulatory requirements, and relevant codes of practice and standards” (Crossrail Learning Legacy, n.d., para.3). Lastly, the firm pays attention to quality management on an individual level, ensuring that contractors and their work meet its requirements. The elements that constitute successful quality management are “confidence, training, teamwork, leadership, recognition and communication” (Milosan, 2014). The evident elements of quality philosophies in Crossrail involve confidence, training, and leadership. The first element is the result of integrity, and Crossrail complies with all regulations. As a construction company that desires to achieve the appropriate results, it provides training to contractors. Lastly, leadership can be seen through the company’s realistic goals and the employment of professionals that are responsible for quality control.
When it comes to quality assurance and quality control, Crossrail has an optimal balance between these fields. Quality assurance is a process-oriented field that seeks to minimize and eliminate quality problems (Surahyo, 2018). Quality control explores quality problems in products that may influence consumer satisfaction (Surahyo, 2018). Considering the incorporated policies and plans of Crossrail, as well as the elimination of issues with contractors by providing extra training, it is obvious that the firm has a balance between QA and QC.
As for the quality management methodology, the company pays a lot of attention to quality assurance. However, the company should focus on continuous improvement as well. Quality planning, QA, QC, and constant improvement are the four main methods to ensure quality management (Kiran, 2016). In Crossrail’s situation, the firm incorporated changes in training procedures after finding imperfections in contractors’ work. Thus, focusing on continuous improvement should minimize the occurrence of mistakes.
As a result, Crossrail’s approach to quality is the reason why the project has been delayed, considering thorough implementation of regulations, unexpected difficulties, and the necessity of quality assurance and control. A complicated project, supplier issues, misunderstanding, and the inability to record adjustments and procedures are all challenges that might lead to poor quality management (Rumane, 2017). Thus, the construction industry is lagging behind in terms of quality management compared to other industries is because the construction industry mainly depends on human labor and skills rather than machinery.
Reference List
Crossrail Learning Legacy. (n.d.). Quality. Web.
Kiran, D.R. (2016) Total quality management: Key concepts and case studies. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Milosan, I. (2014) ‘Studies about the key elements of total quality management’, European Scientific Journal, 3, pp. 67-72.
Rumane, A.R. (2017) Quality management in construction projects. CRC Press.
Surahyo, A. (2018) Understanding construction contracts. Springer.