What Is a Construction Quality Manager and How Can One Help Your Construction Project?
Construction projects are labyrinths of regulations, requirements and potential pitfalls. Failing to ensure that work is done properly or ignoring one rule can throw everything off.
One way to keep your project on track is to hire a construction quality manager. A construction quality manager is a skilled professional whose job it is to inspect a construction project before, during and after construction, ensuring compliance with all safety and quality specifications.
Key Responsibilities of a Construction Quality Manager
Construction quality managers (also called construction quality control managers) serve many key functions on construction projects of all sizes and types.
Quality Assurance Procedures
One of the main responsibilities of a construction quality manager is to ensure that all quality standards are being met. This includes adherence to all rules and regulations, industry standards and project specifications.
First, the construction quality control manager must understand the regulations and quality metrics the project must follow. These can be as broad as OSHA requirements that apply to all projects and workplaces, or as specific as a client’s particular requirements for one phase or portion of a construction project.
This requires the construction quality manager to have a deep understanding of the regulations and industry best practices that are likely to apply to every project on which they work. They must also be able to effectively communicate with all project stakeholders to gain a full understanding of the project specifications, allowing them to develop plans to ensure those standards are upheld and effectively communicating those standards to all workers.
Risk Management
In many cases, complying with federal, state and local regulations and rules requires adherence to strict safety protocols and procedures. Staying compliant with these safety requirements means the construction quality control manager must be able to identify potential risks and hazards.
Preventing falls, for example, means the construction quality manager should have the knowledge and skills necessary to evaluate key equipment — scaffolding, ladders and the like — and be able to identify whether any of the equipment poses a risk to workers. Knowing that something may be hazardous, and developing a plan to avoid that hazard, can go a long way toward preventing any safety-related construction delays.
Risk mitigation goes beyond just ensuring that ladders are safe for worker use; a construction quality manager also must develop plans that cover items such as emergency response, hazardous weather preparedness and any site-specific plans. These plans must be communicated to all involved personnel and, when necessary, they must be trained on implementing the plan.
This task isn’t something that can happen at the beginning of the project and never again; a construction quality manager should routinely check the worksite for hazards and develop mitigation strategies as necessary to protect workers.
Communication and Coordination
Ensuring quality across a construction project, which may include multiple subcontractors and vendors, requires a construction quality control manager to have excellent communication skills. They must be able to distill major stakeholders’ requirements into plans and action items, then pass those plans and action items on to every member of the construction team.
They must be able to effectively communicate with individuals at all levels of a project and provide constructive feedback when an expectation is unrealistic or a standard is not being met.
Benefits of Hiring a Construction Quality Manager
Having a construction quality manager may seem like a big expense, but the benefits far outweigh the costs for keeping your project on time and on budget.
Improved Project Efficiency
With one person responsible for fully understanding all the specifics of the project improves efficiency. If you don’t have one central quality control professional, you risk regulations or standards slipping through the cracks or not being passed on to key personnel. This can cause severe work delays and cost overruns.
Additionally, having a construction quality manager who is responsible for all quality control processes and measures ensures that everything is done correctly the first time. Having multiple people responsible for multiple pieces of your project risks duplicative requests, eating into your timeline and budget.
Workers also know who to go to if they have questions about a requirement or process, allowing for efficient and effective communication.
Enhanced Quality Control
While every individual on your team has a responsibility to ensure quality control, making it one person’s sole focus improves chances that that quality will be maintained.
A construction quality control manager’s experience evaluating and ensuring quality on construction projects makes them uniquely suited to your project. They spend all their time on your worksite monitoring and evaluating your team’s workmanship, checking everything against the standards and regulations they’re supposed to uphold. Because your construction quality manager is solely dedicated to your project’s quality, you get their complete focus on that task.
Additionally, your construction quality manager’s consistent evaluation of project output allows for potential problems to be detected early. This allows for faster, less expensive solutions to be found so your project stays on schedule.
Increased Client Satisfaction
Your reputation means everything to getting new contracts. When clients, subcontractors and other stakeholders know they can trust you and the work you do, you’re more likely to close bigger, better deals that help your business grown.
By using a construction quality manager, you’ll be able to meet or exceed client expectations for project quality, timing and budget. This will improve your trust and reputation, not only with that specific client, but within the industry. Your firm will become known as one that consistently turns in exceptional work and you will be in a better position to compete for — and win — big contracts.
Your Construction Safety Staffing Partners
At Medcor, we make it our mission to help you complete all your construction projects on time and on budget while ensuring your workers are safe and healthy. With our safety staffing solutions, you can source a variety of experienced, skilled safety professionals — including construction quality managers — anywhere in the country for shifts up to 24/7 without having to take on the logistics of hiring, training and managing their employment. Find your next skilled safety professional today.