Construction Quality Management in the Digital Age

The field of project management is fast-changing due to climate change and the widespread deployment of varying technologies. Construction projects nowadays face many more difficulties than they did over the past decades. The increasing size and complexity of construction projects brings new challenges in the project management process, particularly on the construction quality. Construction quality management is one of the pillars of project management. There has been a lot of criticism recently of quality in construction, given the latest catastrophic failures such as Grenfell and the Edinburgh Schools. The improvement opportunities that digital transformation offers can be huge. The cultural change is necessary and opportunity vast. It is now the time for more organizations to consider if they have the workforce in place to deliver digital transformation. This project therefore proposes to address issues of quality, inefficiency and low productivity in the UK Construction Industry and to engender the appropriate culture to make this happen.

To date, the data revealed that the benefits for implementing quality management system properly can be huge, as it is estimated that the cost of rework in the UK (£5bn) is about 5 per cent of the value of every project. This shows evidently the urgency for focus in quality management of the whole project management process. However, this requires shifting mind-sets as well as shifting behaviours by viewing and implementing a quality management system as built-in rather than bolt-on. As a result, there was broad consensus that the culture of construction industry needs to change in terms addressing quality and this change must be driven by Clients.

At present, there are limited studies on looking at quality across the different stages of construction. Particularly, the use of digital technology in managing quality in construction. The research also ascertains what could be done to share information of construction quality throughout the use of digital technology, and to create a shared culture of quality between partners. The need for client lead in the digital environment will be reiterated throughout the research.