Learning Objective 

Upon successful completion of this module, participants will;

• Be able to differentiate between quality assurance and quality control 
• Have a good understanding of the 7 Q.C tools 
• Know the contents of  Project Quality Plan 

Effort required – 30 minutes

Lesson Introduction:

Quality management has many facets, definitions and perceptions. Some of the various terminologies are explored here.

Quality

As per TCM, quality is the conformance of an asset (product, service, process, etc.) with requirements and expectation of its intended purpose.

Quality management

Philip Crosby, an authority on quality management has defined quality management as:

1.  The definition of quality is conformance to requirements (requirements meaning both the product and the customer’s requirements)
2. The system of quality is prevention.
3. The performance standard is zero defects (relative to requirements)
4. The measurement of quality is the price of nonconformance.

In other words, Quality management is the action taken by an organization to ensure that its product, service, process, etc. satisfies the requirements and expectation of its intended purpose. There are three aspects to Quality management.

Quality Planning – Identifies the quality features to be provided and plans for delivering them without deficiencies.

Quality Improvement – Reduces or eliminates deficiencies in current goods, services, or processes.

Quality Control – Maintains the results achieved through the previous two practices.

From the above, while the goal of quality management may be zero defects or deficiencies, in the real world, this goal is rarely achieved. To achieve this goal, quality assurance and quality control elements are introduced.

Quality Assurance – includes practices focused on providing confidence that requirements will be fulfilled. It is generally focused on measuring and assessing conformance of the quality management system and processes with its requirements.

Quality Control – includes practices focused on fulfilling the requirements. It focuses on measuring and assessing the conformance of products with their requirements. For example, “Is the product in accordance with specification?”. To achieve quality control, seven most widely used tools are:

1	Check sheet
2	Histogram
3	Pareto Analysis
4	Fish bone diagram / Ishikawa diagram
5	Scatter diagram
6	Flow Chart
7	Control Chart

Project Quality Plan

Every project delivers something at the end of its execution. During project initiation, the project management and the client jointly defines the objectives and the deliveries of the project along with the completion timelines.

Project execution consists of several deliverables. These deliverables should adhere to certain quality standards (as per industry standards) as well as in line with client’s requirements.

Therefore, each of these deliverables should be validated and verified before delivering to the client. For that, there should be a quality assurance function, which runs from start to the end of the project.

When it comes to quality of project deliverables, it is not only the quality of the deliverables that matter, but the processes or activities that produce these deliverables should also adhere to certain guidelines as well.

To address this, a document called Project Quality Plan is developed by the project team that acts as the quality standard for all processes of the project. A quality plan typically covers the following contents:

• Quality standards that will be followed
• Quality goals of the project
• Quality roles and responsibilities
• Project deliverables and processes subject to quality review
• Quality control and quality management activities planned for the project
• Quality tools that will be used for the training
• Corrective action, Preventive actions, Continuous improvement actions
• Quality training plan
• Quality metrics to be collected

An example of a Project Quality Plan in a typical construction project is provided below for illustrative purpose only.

Summary 

Quality is conformance to requirements and fitness for use. The system for achieving quality is prevention. The quality plan of the projects specifies the methods and resources for achieving the quality goals of the project. The most commonly used quality control tools are;

• Checklist
• Histogram
• Pareto analysis 
• Fishbone diagram 
• Scatter diagram 
• Flow chart 
• Control chart 

Exercise 

Describe the quality assurance and control activities planned / performed in any one of your projects.