Total quality management in the upgrading of Jie road and Lopeduru road to bituminous standards in Moroto Municipality.

Abstract

The field attachment was undertaken to report on Total Quality Management and how it was implemented on the Jie and Lopeduru road projects in Moroto Municipal Council. The specific objectives include describing the Quality Planning, Quality Assurance and Quality Control processes as components of Quality Management Systems during project implementation. Total Quality Management is an organizational approach for meeting customer needs and expectations that involve all managers and employees in using quantitative methods to improve continuously the organizations processes, products and services. Quality management also focuses on improving stakeholder’s satisfaction through continuous and incremental improvements to processes. Quality planning involves identifying the quality standards which are relevant to the project and determining how to satisfy them. A good quality plan must consider required capital, labor, and technology resources given that the alignment of value that customers want and value that the project is capable of delivering is an overall effectiveness measure of strategic fit. Quality assurance means all the planned and systematic activities implemented within the project and demonstrated as needed to provide adequate confidence that an entity or project will fulfill quality requirements and can manage the quality of the project deliverables. It refers to the actual testing of product components and the entire products before and during delivery. Quality Assurance also forms a part of every project management processes from the moment the project initiates to the final steps in the project closure phase. Quality Control involves use of closely monitored performance measures to gauge quality as a product is being manufactured. Quality Control involves steps such as “Checking” and “Acting”. The “Checking” step is where data – driven tools are used to routinely monitor, inspect, and improve quality processes while the “Acting” step is where corrective actions are taken to improve processes that fail to add value. From this field attachment, it was concluded that there is huge demand from customers for better quality work; which demand has however not been met sustainably by many providers because of various challenges hindering effective implementation of total quality management in the construction industry. Some of these challenges include; awarding tenders based on lowest cost and not efficiency; lack of expertise, commitment and understanding in Quality Management by both top management and project staff; lack of clients’ awareness about the importance of quality management on projects; difficulty in changing behavior and attitude related to quality; lack of effective communication between project stakeholders; lack of a clear strategy for Quality Management in many companies and absence of documented feedback from other projects. Recommendations made include: Organizations to review their procurement policies to give provision for tender awards based on efficiency rather than lowest cost only; clients and or beneficiaries of services need to aware themselves on the importance of quality on projects being delivered for their benefit; Organizations to invest on training their staff on project quality management; organizations to reduce communication gaps by having clear reporting mechanisms and or structures; organizations to document project events during execution for future benchmarking and legal defense.