Sean Blackmore
Sean Blackmore is Galliford Try's Group Technical Services Director; his role includes a responsibility for leading the Group's approach to deliver on quality as part of our Sustainable Growth Strategy. To round off World Quality Week, Sean explains the challenges the construction industry must address, the drive to maintain its focus on quality assurance with a backdrop of competing cost and programme pressures and an industry skills shortage, and how our approach to keeping it simple is paying off.
Quality, or rather the failure of quality, is one of the biggest challenges facing the construction industry today, with contractors striving to achieve the level of quality expected every day in the buildings and infrastructure that they deliver.
We are all aware of recent events that have highlighted that, as an industry, we have failed to consistently deliver the standards of quality that people have a right to expect.
Most importantly, quality impacts health and safety both during construction and when the asset is in use. It also affects our carbon footprint and our wider sustainability credentials, as well as our business reputation and profitability. It is recognised as a key element in maintaining job satisfaction among our people, maintaining the pride in what we deliver.
Culture
It is important that we demonstrate a culture and hold a set of behaviours, that collectively promotes the delivery of the expected quality on our construction projects and that we see quality as a moral imperative. Our Chief Executive Bill Hocking is unequivocal in his message, quality is a strongly held principle that compels us all to act with integrity.
It is great to see our business unit leadership teams tackling the subject of quality assurance and performance head on over the last few years. During World Quality Week our leadership has been leading by example, supporting and spreading their message to keep quality assurance simple and to get it right first time.
Our approach
Against a backdrop of standards, regulations and specifications, understanding how to deliver a quality-assured project can seem daunting. Our approach is to keep it simple, and this is supported by the strategy that was implemented during our Building Management System (BMS) update in 2021.
Our ‘quality wheel’ maintains the simplicity of our approach, with straightforward steps to embed quality into our designs and to follow through into project delivery and handover. This approach is supported by the BMS, it contains the processes and templates required to provide quality assurance at every step of a projects journey, irrespective of size and complexity.
We recognise that it is key to select and appoint the correct design consultants and supply chain partners and in doing so make our designs buildable in a digital platform that supports collaboration and planning for quality.
We need to keep developing our digital tools and approach, be that our BIM models, 3D viewing tools such as Dalux, our site record tools such as Field View and common data environment in View Point. By maximising the benefits, we receive from our digital strategy we can create a holistic approach through the lifecycle of a project.
Ultimately, whichever tools we use, and however we are supported through process and procedures, as individuals we have the greatest influence over the end result. That can be from just taking pride in a job done well, to being prepared to take an ethical position, highlighting when things are not right. By doing the right thing, we can all play our own part in delivering our Sustainable Growth Strategy.