6 Tips To Minimize The Occurrence of Non-conformance (NCR)

On a construction project, we always received a non-conformance report from the Engineer. It is perhaps the lack of experience of site crews, unprepared or inability to get approved materials and drawings, due to delays of the project, and many sorts of reasons. We will discuss here how to prevent or minimize nonconformance.

We will define the key to prevent or minimize nonconformance in a construction project.

Here are the 6 tips.

1. Read Specification

Once the project is about to start letting yourself and all other staff be involved on the site be prepared by reading project specifications. The ability to read all sections of specifications might prevent the existence of NCR. Why?

Because the specification is the number one source or reference what materials to be fixed in summary what are the requirements would a certain work really needed. I would suggest reading the specification several times in order that anyone can remember each requirement.

2. Read Drawings

The same with drawing, each concern should read the drawings and study because this is the blueprint of what and how the project is to be made. After reading, each can check the ongoing certain activity on the site. So before mistakes happen, the quality engineer or site engineer can prevent them, the site crews pursuing work which leads to nonconformity.

3. Document Controlling

Proper document controlling or document control procedure might contribute to preventing the occurrence of a nonconformity, now the question is how?

• The assigned or appointed document controller must be qualified by having required educational attainment must be a college degree holder. A document controller must be educated and can easily understand the task and be well rounded in communications.
• He must have enough work experience. I was connected with one company I don’t want to mention the name of the company what the Top Management strategy when the crisis came, they made the laborer as “DC”. They trained them but guess what? There was a huge effect during the progress of the project. The “DC” was not really equipped with document controlling processes, he doesn’t know how to keep the file, right labeling, correct logging of documents, tracing and stamping of documents, etc. See what the effect, site crews using the superseded revision of the drawing and it resulted in a nonconformity.
• The assigned document controller must-have skills: it will be very hard for some staff to obtain what documents he wanted to get because he doesn’t know how to properly file the updated or revised documents such as material approval, drawing, inspections, RFIs, etc. and they cannot immediately trace out.

4. Provide Qualified Manpower or Human Resources

This is an important aspect to look at once hiring a person for a new project. There should be thorough screening and strict qualifications of the manpower to be involved in from Engineer down to skilled laborer.

Because if one skilled is assigned to work for a certain activity on the site let say “block laying” and he doesn’t know well or doesn’t have sufficient technical know-how then the work shall be a mess. So it is really necessary to stricter the screening of the site crews to work on the site. What we really mean is having enough experience in order to perform the respective task well.

5. QA/QC Engineer/Inspector

Yes! This is it, there would be continual surveillance on site by a quality engineer or inspector in order to ensure whether the materials, the site construction team is using is approved and or there would be a continual inspection or checking during the progress of the work of a certain activity to ensure if it is complying with the approved drawing.  So if a quality engineer or inspector noticed the mistakes that could lead to a non-conformance they could correct it before the final construction is accepted by the Engineer.

6. Conduct periodic audit

This action can help reduce the existence of nonconformance in your project. Because audit can discover anything out of the quality management system of your project or your company and thus it will push you to rectify any defects or noncomplying factors such as work on site without updating drawing, incoming material without approval, not suitable staff for the job hired, etc. If you don’t comply with the result of the audit then the problem will not be solved and the excessive number of nonconformances may be blown.

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Did you follow the above tips to prevent or minimize nonconformnce? Please comment “Yes” in the comment box below if you did.