What a Real Quality and Inspection Regime Costs to Run

Quality control is a budget line, not a state of mind. What the inspection and testing regime on a building site actually costs, and what each part of it prevents.

A quality regime consists of documents, people, tests and time, and each of those has a price. Projects that treat quality as an attitude rather than a cost end up with an inspection regime that exists on paper, which is worse than having none because it creates a record of approvals nobody performed. Pricing it honestly is how it survives the first programme squeeze.

What this number does and does not include

This covers the cost of running the quality and inspection regime on a building project: the planning documents, the staff, the external testing, the time the hold points consume and the administration of the records. It excludes the cost of rectifying defects, which is what the regime exists to reduce, and it excludes design quality assurance. Testing requirements come from the specification, the applicable building code provisions and the requirements of the relevant authorities, which are revised from time to time, so confirm what applies to your project before budgeting for it.

The quality plan and inspection and test plans

The documents that state how quality will be controlled: the project quality plan, and an inspection and test plan for each work type listing the activities, the reference standard, the inspection and hold points, the acceptance criteria, who inspects and what record is produced. Preparing them properly takes professional time at mobilisation and is the cheapest part of the whole regime.

• Pushes it up: Many specialist systems, a demanding specification, and a requirement for approval of each plan before the related work starts.
• Brings it down: Reusing a sound template library and adapting it, rather than drafting from nothing on each project.
• How to control it: Prepare the plans before the work starts rather than alongside it, because a plan written after the pour is a record of nothing.

Quality staff on site

The people who perform and witness inspections, maintain the records and chase non conformances. On a small project this is part of an engineer role; on a larger one it is a dedicated quality engineer or a small team. This is usually the largest line in the regime, and it is the first one cut when the programme tightens.

• Pushes it up: Multiple simultaneous work fronts, shift working, and a specification with many witnessed hold points.
• Brings it down: Sequencing work so inspections cluster, and training trade supervisors to perform first line checks before the formal inspection.
• How to control it: Set the staffing from the number of hold points in the inspection plans rather than from a percentage of the contract value.

External and laboratory testing

Concrete cube testing, compaction and soil testing, weld and coating inspection, pressure testing, electrical testing, and the commissioning of systems by specialists. Costs depend on the number of tests the specification requires, the frequency and whether an independent laboratory is mandated. Some tests are required by the authorities rather than by your specification.

• Pushes it up: High testing frequencies, independent laboratory requirements, remote sites where travel is charged, and retests after failures.
• Brings it down: Consolidating sampling to reduce call outs, and designing the sequence so tests happen in batches.
• How to control it: Build the testing schedule from the specification at mobilisation and price it as a quantity, so a failure driven increase is visible rather than absorbed.

Programme time consumed by hold points

A hold point stops work until an inspection is passed, which is its purpose and also its cost. Curing periods, test result turnaround, witness availability and approval of samples all consume programme. Unplanned, they appear as delay. Planned, they are simply part of the duration.

• Pushes it up: Hold points requiring an external party to attend, test results with a long turnaround, and approvals that depend on someone off site.
• Brings it down: Building the hold points into the programme from the start, and agreeing witnessing arrangements and notice periods in advance.
• How to control it: Show every hold point in the programme with its notice period, so the time is in the plan and is not argued about afterwards.

Samples, mock ups and benchmarks

Physical samples and first off installations that establish the accepted standard before the trade proceeds at scale. They cost material, labour and time, and they are the single most effective control over finish quality because they replace words with an object both parties have accepted.

• Pushes it up: Many finish types, bespoke elements, and full size mock ups of complex assemblies such as a facade panel.
• Brings it down: Limiting mock ups to the elements where the risk is real, and using an area of the actual building as the benchmark where possible.
• How to control it: Approve a benchmark for every significant finish before the trade starts, and keep it available for comparison until the work is complete.

Non conformance administration

Raising, tracking, closing and verifying non conformance reports, together with the corrective action work and the re inspection. The administration itself is modest; the cost sits in the rework and in the management attention each report consumes.

• Pushes it up: A high volume of reports, which usually signals a supervision problem rather than a quality control one.
• Brings it down: First line checks by trade supervisors before formal inspection, which catches problems before they become reports.
• How to control it: Track the number of open reports and their age as a weekly metric, because a growing backlog predicts the handover problems you will have.

Records, handover documentation and the asset register

Compiling the inspection records, test certificates, material approvals, as built information and warranties into a handover file, and building the asset register. The cost is clerical if the records were kept properly throughout, and substantial if the file has to be reconstructed at the end.

• Pushes it up: Poor record keeping during the works, multiple document systems, and a requirement for a particular format or language.
• Brings it down: Maintaining the file continuously from the first month so that completion is a check rather than a compilation.
• How to control it: Audit the handover file at a third and at two thirds of the way through the works, when gaps can still be filled cheaply.

Costs that never appear on the first page

• Retesting after a failure, which carries both the test cost and the programme consequence of the hold.
• Material rejected on arrival, where the cost is the delay rather than the material, because the replacement has its own lead time.
• Specialist attendance for witnessing, charged per visit, which rewards clustering inspections and punishes ad hoc calls.
• Translation and certification of supplier documentation where the specification or an authority requires it.
• The cost of accepting work without a record, which converts a quality question into a commercial one at handover.
• Management time spent on a regime that is not resourced, which produces paperwork without inspection and a false record.

Keeping the budget honest

Build the quality budget from the inspection and test plans: count the hold points, the tests and the witnessed activities, then resource and programme them. A regime costed that way can be defended when the programme tightens, because the cost of removing a specific hold point is visible. A regime costed as a percentage disappears quietly in the first squeeze, and its absence is discovered at handover.

• At mobilisation, when the plans are prepared and the regime is resourced.
• At the start of each major work type, when the hold points and the benchmark for that trade are confirmed.
• Monthly, against the count of open non conformances and their age.
• At the handover file audits, when missing records can still be recovered.
• At practical completion, when the whole record set is checked against the schedule.

Domira builds and supervises projects across Saudi Arabia, and the commercial discipline above is how its projects stay inside their budget and their programme. Send the drawings, the contract or the site and Domira will tell you where the risk actually sits.