The evolution of quality management in home building

To get a handle on genuine quality management and develop the culture and systems to support it, the Rule of 1-10-100 must remain ever-present in our minds. The ultimate answer is prevention of problems, with a lock-tight process for remedy and recovery when things do go wrong, as happens in even the best systems. When managing quality, we tend to develop a plethora of forms, checklists, rules, regulations, and procedures, but each one has to stand up to the question: How is this leading us beyond inspection and rework toward prevention of problems? This is where our time is best spent, because this is where both the quality and the money lie.

As in all effective change processes, step one is to gain an honest understanding of where you are. As Jim Collins wrote more than a decade ago in “Good to Great,” the best companies are those that have the capacity to “face the brutal facts.” Let’s consider the evolution of quality management in phases and see where you stand.

Phase 1: Quality by Rework

This is the time-honored tradition of “fix it after it’s broke,” but it occurs largely as a matter of happenstance rather than through a structured process. Characteristics of builders at this phase include:

1. Primitive to no systems for customer call-in, scheduling, and tracking to back up field staff.
2. Specific training in quality process or customer management seldom, if ever, seen.
3. Good scopes of work with evidence of genuine use in the field or during purchasing are rare.
4. Success is wholly dependent on the skill of the local superintendent to spot and diagnose problems and get them repaired or replaced. In some cases, getting things fixed means a substantial toolbox and supplies in the back of a pickup.
5. Frequent dependence on a punch-out staff — common here in the U.S. and a particular problem of our friends up north in Canada. This tends to enable and reinforce the poor processes, systems, or workmanship that produced the problems in the first place.
6. Almost no feedback or data generated for purposes of continual improvement in product and process.

I have seen both quality and customer service problems remedied at this level through continued heroic efforts of superintendents. The problem is there just aren’t enough heroes to go around. Sooner or later the house is ready, but this approach never meets the needs of the company, because the costs are simply too high.

Phase 2: Quality by Inspection

Many problems stem from inspection-based quality as described in the Rule of 1-1-100 above, yet it is still a significant step forward compared to the random approach of Phase 1. The most common characteristics of Phase 2 include:

1. Scopes of work are nearly always present, although typically one-way, and close examination reveals they are rarely used during purchasing negotiations or in the field.
2. Training is limited to dealing with upset customers and how to recover when something goes wrong.
3. Superintendents spend a great deal of their time going from house to house, inspecting what has been done, what has not, and to what level of acceptability.
4. A broad array of checklists for trades or construction phase.
5. Considerable buried cost in rework.
6. Tremendous activity during the two weeks prior to closing to get the home ready, and significant work during the first 30 days after closing to get the details right.

More advanced stages of this approach transfer checklist responsibility from the superintendents to the suppliers or trades. The great majority of these checklists contain “job complete” type of criteria. Going deeper, you find some builders have progressed to “job ready” checklists for the incoming trade. As always, the proof is if and how they are used. If the job is truly not ready, does the trade have not just the authority but the mandate to stop the line and remedy the problems before proceeding? And is there a managed feedback system to analyze checklist data and use in your continual improvement process? Without that, checklists become just a paper-pushing exercise.