Builders: How to Improve Your Field Inspection Pass Rate

RealtorMag recently highlighted an alarming fact: About 45% of residential field inspections reveal a code violation. 

How does your construction process measure up?

Add Quality Inspections into your schedules!

Are you encountering improperly placed anchor bolts, missing blocking for braced wall panels or inadequately measured horizontal space planned for stairways?

These issues are identified as Top 10 code violations in the Journal Of Light Construction (in a Feb. 5, 2016 article, Top 10 Code Violations).

Do you have any idea about your Top 10?

We've been blogging about the interest in building quality in during the construction process. Did you know that construction scheduling software can help you identify issues before they get to the stage of a failed inspection?

Take a look at your construction schedule: do you have Quality Inspection tasks included in your task list?  Or, are you relying on someone "catching" an issue during a stage walk through -- when they're already busy or, even, overloaded with other tasks?  Or, do you wait until a failed inspection to repair? There goes efficiency on that job!

Or, worse,  does the organization wait for a problem to be caught by your home buyer during the walkthrough?  You need issue-free walkthroughs to generate buyer referrals! Facebook and other social media platforms are only too available to record issues and complaints.

Put Quality Inspection tasks into your construction schedule as the last item to satisfy a Milestone. Then, the schedule can't be considered on-time as the Milestone can't be completed until the Quality Inspection is processed.

CPS has been helping builders build in quality with FieldCollaborate since the 90's -- ask us to show you how FieldCollaborate will help you become more efficient with greater accuracy and happier homeowners!

How to: Build in Quality in New Home Construction

 A recent Carl Seville blog, Desperately Seeking Quality, was featured in Green Building Advisor.

Associate QI with task to achieve Milestone

Great title!

Seville bemoans a shortage of skilled labor and current high volume of work combining to create knowledge and communications gaps in the field.

Seville asks: "Where is the quality control?" He says inspectors are finding a significant amount of deficient work and that field superintendents tend to rely on their subcontractors to monitor their own work.

Most would agree: quality needs to start early in the process. While it can be reviewed or measured at the end of a job, that's really too late to be effective.  At that point, quality problems mean rework is the solution -- and that's both costly and inefficient.

Having your home buyers walk their new home to discover problems doesn't build the type of relationship home builders need in today's market.   Facebook is only too happy to post photos and comments submitted by unhappy homeowners.  And, referrals are too good of a source for future business to ignore.

One effective way to build in quality is to develop Quality Inspection measures at meaningful points throughout the construction process.  Don't wait for a  builder walk check list, in other words! Your Quality Inspections don't need to measure at every milestone although that might be a reasonable initial starting point.

QI templates drill down for specifics

Are you using automated scheduling software? Make a Quality Inspection the last task of a milestone in the schedule.  In other words, the milestone can't be complete until every task -- including the Quality Inspection -- is complete. That way, your superintendent or field manager is reviewing work in a timely manner and schedules stuck at a milestone with an open QI task are easily identified within schedule progress.

CPS offers construction scheduling software providing Quality Inspection processes -- contact us and see how FieldCollaborate lets you build in quality during the construction process! And, you'll be doing it on the jobsite, in real-time with results available for your vendors, anywhere/anytime, using the Vendor Portal.