ISO 9001 QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
FOR CONSULTANTS AND CONTRACTORS
Robert J. Nespeco, P.E.
Director, Quality Assurance
MTA Bridges and Tunnels
2 Broadway, 21st Floor
New York, NY 10004
E-mail:
PHONE (646) 252-7657
FAX (646) 252-7651
SUMMARY
The Engineering and Construction Department of MTA Bridges & Tunnels is responsible for the successful execution of the Agencies Capital and Major Maintenance Program. A combined total of 340 + million will be committed in 2003. The Department has been ISO 9001 registered since 1995 and has required Consultants and Contractors to operate under a Project Specific ISO 9001 Quality Management System since 1997. The presentation will discuss how this integrated QMS is working and provide a practical program to integrate design and construction practices, the Demming Improvement Cycle, Process Control and Risk Management practices into a comprehensive ISO 9001-2000 Quality Management System.
The Goal of this Presentation is two fold.
1.To discuss the role that Quality Management plays in the successful development and execution of our Design and Construction Program at MTA Bridges and Tunnels.
2.To build on this success and demonstrate how a Quality Management System can work for you and help you achieve a high level of customer satisfaction at the lowest internal cost.
MTA B&T is the largest toll collection agency in the United States. It operates seven Bridges and two Tunnels within the city of New York. About 820,000 Vehicles a day use our facilities.
In 2002 - MTA B&T collected more than $950 million in revenue and provided over $530 million in support to mass transit in the NY Metro area.
The importance of maintaining our facilities in a state of good repair for both their impact on the regional economy and support they manifest to keep public transportation at a reasonable cost cannot be understated.
Maintaining this state of good repair, however, does not come without cost.
2003 brings us to the fourth year of our one billion dollar five year capital program. This year we expect to place $300+ million in capital construction, design and construction management contracts and $44 million in non-capital repair and structural coating contracts.
The Engineering and Construction Department is charged with the responsibility of managing this Capital and Major Maintenance Program. Presidential Policy in 1990 directed that the work of the Department and that of the contractors and consultants be done under a quality program as a means to assure the best possible outcome for our projects and the prudent expenditure of public funds.
As a result we have been a leader in Public Sector Quality Program Management implementation and educational efforts to promote design and construction industry implementation of Quality Management Systems.
We began to required a Quality System be developed and implemented by our contractors and consultants in 1991. This was expanded to requiring contractors and consultants to have a Project (Contract) specific Quality Management System compliant with ISO 9001-94 in 1997 and a Quality Management System compliant with ISO 9001-2000 in January of 2002.
The E&C Department was first registered to ISO 9001 in 1995 and is currently compliant with the 2000 issue of the standard.
Our Quality Management approach is applied;
To ourselves, as the owner, to assure our projects are properly defined and user impact is considered; costs are defined and controlled and the Consultant and Contractors performing the work for us are properly managed.
To our consultants and contractors to assure the best possible outcome for our projects. QMS Manuals are requested from each Consultant and Contractor and when approved, periodic audits are conducted to assure implementation.
We also provide practical assistance to Consultants and Contractors in the form of a Model Quality Management System Manual to assist them in QMS development. A reproduction of this manual and the actual contract requirements we use are included in the ISO 9001:2000 Interpretive Guide for the Design and Construction Project Team. This is a publication of the Design/Construction Division of ASQ and is available as an E book through ASQ. It is a very worthwhile publication that examines the unique way the ISO 9001:2000 Standard can be applied to all project participants owner/project manager, consultant, contractor.
Additional assistance is provided to our engineering staff and consultants and contractors through our Project QA Engineers who visit the consultants office, construction sites and our own engineering staff for the purpose of promoting improvement, through coaching and training.
This effort has been worthwhile. Our consultants and contractors have successfully developed project specific Quality Management System(s) and are implementing them. The practical results has been very few problem projects and a high level of satisfaction with contractor and consultant performance as evaluated directly by the B&T engineering staff at the facility where the work is being done. In 2002 contractor performance was satisfactory in 89% of our contracts and consultant performance was satisfactory in 94% of our design contracts. Schedule issues were the major causes of dissatisfaction. Quality of the work itself was rarely a cause of dissatisfaction.
Over the past year and a half we have been successfully involved in helping our contractors and consultants in understanding the 2000 version of the standard and in the next part of the presentation I will focus on those issues of greatest concern to our contractors and consultants in their development and implementation of an ISO 9001-2000 based QMS.
When you read the 2000 version of the Standard its easy to become caught up in strange terminology, unusual syntax (the term Product Realization comes to mind) and determining its overall relevance to design or construction activities.
In order to demonstrate relevance, I would like to focus on three concepts and how their integration creates a Management System that will make you more successful.
Concept 1 is the universal business imperative
Get work, do work, get paid.
Concept 2 in the late Dr. Demmings Improvement Cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act.
Concept 3 is the development, implementation, control and improvement in the work processes that are vital
to your success as an organization.
First let us integrate Concept 1 and Concept 2.
Lets look at the get work, do work and get paid concept and apply the Demming Improvement Cycle of Plan, Do, Check, Act of and see what happens.
First lets’ interrupt the “do work” to “get paid” path with a “check work” line. Why? Because if you check the work for meeting requirements before you get paid you will have an opportunity to uncover errors and fix them so that in turning over a project to the client you can maximize what you get paid through a reduction in punch list items, re work or error and omission actions which may diminish what you are paid or squeeze your profit.
Then something else is necessary. If problems are uncovered, they need to be analyzed to determine what action needs to be taken to prevent recurrence. This analysis is then acted upon to improve either or both of the “Get Work” or “Do Work” part of the process. This should lead to a more satisfied customer, lower internal cost and an improvement in the profit part of the “Get paid” component.
I like to point out to people that the Improvement Cycle is not unique or new, but is the cycle of successful human development. For a moment reflect upon all of those times in your life that you grew as a person and see how the Plan, Do, Check, Act Cycle helped you. Maybe you didn’t have a very good plan and you failed. If you didn’t analyze your failure and change your plan you probably failed again. If you did, your probability of success increased the next time.
You would think the transfer of this tool to the business arena would have been easy. It hasn’t been, and my personal reason for this is that people in business are reluctant for professional, legal, personal reasons or fear of reprisal to admit error.
As a consequence the data you need to improve your management systems is lost and less than optimum performance is perpetuated.
I remember reading a quote one time that said “experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again”. A clear case for the Demming Improvement Cycle.
One of the innovations in the auto industry is the ability of a work team to stop the line to fix a defective unit, before it goes to the next work station. This creates a powerful incentive for each workstation to get the work done properly and gives management the tools to fix the process, provide additional training, etc to prevent recurrence. The goal is a defect free product, and people are not penalized for identifying defects. As the slide says, don’t shoot the messenger.
As you move to integrate the 2000 edition of the standard into your business this is going to be a challenge area to implement successfully and one that is essential to the foundation of a successful Quality Management System.
The next area I would like to speak about is the concept of “Process”. You will see this term used through out the standard; but what does it mean in our industry.
In general a process is an activity that has an input to which effort is applied to transform the input into a product. The methodology of the process is the “Plan” part of the Demming Cycle. The implementation is the “Do” Part.
The input could be data, materials, criteria, requirements, supplies. The transformation can be physical such as welding, bolting, concrete placement or intellectual such as a design, an inspection, or an analysis. The output can be a drawing, specification, building, report, subassembly.
The product may have value directly or may be used as input to the next process.
The key attribute of the process is that it has an output and that the output can be measured or analyzed for acceptability or conformity to requirements. This is the check part of the Demming Cycle.
The “Act” part comes into play when an out put does not conform to requirements and steps need to be taken to correct and prevent recurrence.
The one step you need to consider before you can successfully develop a Quality Management System that satisfies the 2000 edition of the Standard is to identify all of the processes that are necessary for you to meet business, productivity and quality goals and fulfill your organizational mission. These processes can be separated into key processes, meaning those vital to your success, and support processes, meaning those process that supply input to or otherwise support your key process.
Lets go back to the universal business imperative as modified by our Demming Improvement Model and see how this can work. For each category consider:
GET WORK
Business Development - Do you have a systematic process?
Opportunity Evaluation - How do you pick the projects to bid on?
Proposal Development & Submittal - How do you assure the work is done on time?
Resource evaluation - Can you handle the job?
Negotiation - Can you get the project and maximize income?
Lessons learned if not successful - Do you maintain records?
DO WORK
Project Planning - Objectives, resources, delivery
Project Control - CPM, bar chart, resource loaded schedule
Design Development - Consider all possible input
Construction - Do people in the field know what to do?
Subcontracting - Have you hired based on ability or price?
Material Procurement - How have you assured materials are correct?
Control of Work Processes - Do you have written procedures?
Resource Management - Right people at the right place for the proper time
Servicing - After care. If you need to fix it, how
do you feedback info to your system?
CHECK WORK
Design reviews, verification - Do you routinely check work?
Inspections - Do you inspect your own work?
Testing - Do you test your own work?
Computer Simulation - Does it produce consistent & accurate results
Customer feed back - Do you have a formal process to review
Internal Audit - Are you performing for compliance & effectiveness
Non conforming Product Control - Are you keeping bad product away from your customer
ACT TO IMPROVE
Corrective action - Are you correcting the system?
Preventive action - Are you analyzing potential problems?
Management Review - Is Top Management Involved?
Data analysis - Are you looking at all your performance data?
Process/Product Improvement - Are you improving on a continuing basis?
GET PAID
Invoicing - Do you know what format to bill in?
Cash management - Have you analyzed your cash flow?
Bonding - Do you go competitive?
Retainage - Have you asked about bond or security substitution
or reduction in percentage for a QA program
SUPPORT PROCESS
Human Resources - Do you have position descriptions for key personnel?
Uniform hiring practices?
Training - Are employees trained and is training effective?
Communication - What controls do you have?
Paper? electronic?
Document control - Do you know what to control and
how to do it?
Record control - Do you know legal requirements?
Identified business requirements?
Work environment - What are you doing to keep
employees safe and facilitate the work?
Infrastructure - Do your employees have the tools
for success?
NESPECOM12
ISO 9001 QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
FOR CONSULTANTS AND CONTRACTORS
My objective here was not present a comprehensive list of all possible Processes but to stimulate your thoughts on what you do as an organization and see how your business model can fit into the standard. Indeed many of the processes identified in the “get work” and “get paid” topics are not usually considered as part of an ISO-9001 program because they do not directly affect product quality. I’ve included them because they do affect your business and you may want to include them in your Quality Management System to help assure they are effective and implemented. Once you have identified your processes. I would recommend that you create a matrix with the following elements:
Process / ProcessObjectives / Accomplishment Risk / Effect on Organizational Performance / Probability
of
Occurrence / Ranking of Importance / Controls
To
Minimize Risk / Testing/
Performance Measure
1
2
3
4 / 1
2
3
4 / (What can keep you from achieving the objective of the process / (If the out put of the process is wrong or doesn’t get accomplished what are the consequences to the organization / Your best guess on how often things go wrong.
Low to high probability. / High to Low / (How do you control the process) / Audit Frequency
What are your methods of measuring the process and product for conformance and effective-ness
This matrix will serve to address a number of the requirements of section 4 of the standard and also section 8.5.3.”Preventive Action”. It could also serve as the means to identify what areas your internal audit program should look at and how often you may want to look a process to determine if it is compliant and effective. (Combination of Effect and Probability of Occurrence).
CONCLUSION
Is this the only way to address these issues? No. They can be addressed any way you deem appropriate, but they need to be addressed in order for your Management System to be effective in making your business more successful.
One other word, no Quality Management System can guarantee success. Management still needs to make decisions on what to make, how to make it and what the market for the product is. If these decisions are correct then a QMS will help produce these products efficiently with lower internal cost and high levels of customer satisfaction.
I hope in this short time that I have convinced you of the relevance of applying the ISO 9001-2000 Standard in a Design/Construction environment and was able to demonstrate its application can and will improve your bottom line.
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