Quality is a central function to all construction and industrial projects. While many professional services and product companies in the world have version of quality control in the form of management and checks and balances, the industries (amongst other industries including manufacturing, aerospace etc.) really do stand alone when it comes to quality.
A large part of maintaining quality control and building quality into your every day processes is the quality report.
A quality report is a report which documents a specific quality process or outcome (or both), such as an inspection test plan, quality communications plan or non-conformance report.
The purpose of these reports is to make your quality management process and quality control procedures concrete - and to make sure you are measuring - both quantitatively and qualitatively - the outputs of these processes so as to ensure that your project is maintaining the quality standards set out in official quality assurance and quality control guidelines, as well as the specifications set out by the client and/or contractor.
Because quality reports are important to the functioning and overall success of your projects; naturally, the format of your quality reports is important too. Your quality reports will be touching the hands and attracting the eyes of a number of important stakeholders, who are associating your quality reports (and their formatting) with the quality of your work and the likely outcome of their asset or project.
Messy and poorly formatted quality reports indicate to other parties that your quality processes and controls will be sloppy - even if they are not.
Outside of the poor impression your quality reports may set, properly reporting on quality inputs and outputs are to be reported on in accordance with the quality standards you have agreed to, such as the ISO9000 and it's variations. The type and extensiveness of your quality reports will depend upon which guidelines you have agreed to follow, as well as the strictness and processes of the other parties involved in your project.
These parameters, as well as your own internal tools like the quality management system you use or the size of your quality teams will also effect what and how extensive your quality reports are.
Ultimately, the 'quality' of your quality reporting and work will impact how much work you get and what your reputation is. If you maintain high quality project delivery with high quality reporting, then you can always point to your records in the case of unfair disputes or claims, as well as lean on the objective data such as the number of defects on your jobs or speed to corrective actions. This protects your reputation, and protects you bank account as well. A quality reporting app can help streamline processes to keep track of submitted reports and detailed analytics to improve performance.
All of these reports and clean data will help you improve the quality of your work and over time, help you win more work too.
As mentioned, the quality guidelines set out prior to the project commencing will impact the types and frequency of quality reporting you conduct, as will what you communicate to and agree with your other parties.
We'll outline some of the more popular quality reports below, along with some proven formatting tips and guidelines to help you steer your quality reports into the clear.
The defect report is a staple quality report. Defects occur regularly on projects, with heavy machinery, lots of transportation and moving parts resulting in a lot of surface imperfections and 'defects'.
Your defect report should follow this simple format:
This is the type of formatting very common amongst quality reports. You outline the defect and who or more importantly what was responsible for the defect; you document and describe the defect with supporting evidence; then you draft or create an action for resolving this defect.
As you can derive from this report, the better contractors and subcontractors are at following this format and communicating the format fields, the faster defects move from defect to resolved.
