A study of the prospects of evolution from quality assurance to total quality management for the Hong Kong construction industry

Abstract

Prior to the application of Quality Assurance (QA) systems in 1991,the Quality Control (QC) culture dominated the Hong Kong construction industry in quality management of construction works.The government organization - Hong Kong Housing Authority - took the lead in adopting QA system including the implementation of the Performance Assessment Scoring System (PASS) in 1991.In the following 15 years (1991 -2006), the QA culture continually developed and a majority of construction industry organizations in Hong Kong became fully familiar with the application of QA.However,sub-standard construction and shortcoming in the industry's operation were still reported.The industry stakeholders started looking for other quality management approaches to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their quality systems.The Total Quality Management (TQM) philosophy was included in these other approaches.The objective of this thesis is to investigate the impact of the QA system to the Hong Kong construction industry and how TQM could affect the Hong Kong construction organizations to achieve "Excellence" in construction project quality.These objectives are achieved by six questionnaire surveys carried out in two stages,in 2007/2008 and 2011/2012 respectively.The results of this investigation indicate that back in 2006, the quality control culture of supervision and inspection had already been transformed to a mature systematic quality assurance culture in the Hong Kong construction industry.Yet the TQM culture was still far from mature at that time (2006).The analysis of the questionnaires of the second stage survey completed in 2012 (or more exactly January 2013) suggests,however, that the construction industry is becoming more familiar (although not mature) with the application of TQM. The questionnaire respondents also tend to agree that TQM elements of top management leadership, continual improvement and organizational learning are the main focuses for sustaining business in the construction industry.Such Hong Kong experience should be of interest to organizations in countries that seek to implement improvement frameworks to raise their construction quality culture.