BRIAN CLARKE, CSP
FOUNDER AND CEO
The Construction Industry has a Reputation Problem
During Brian’s (founder of QST) time at Hoffman Construction, the chief legal counsel led a meeting with the Operations Manager; his only question to the group was, “Why are we called ‘Contractors’ and not ‘Builders?'” The answer? “We are called ‘Contractors’ because as an industry, we have under-delivered on schedule, exceeded budget, and delivered buildings with defects for so long that owners will not engage with us without a contract.”
Be part of the solution. Implement at your company a weekly craft training using QST’s trade specific Quality topics
A Parallel “Quality and Safety”
A close friend of Brian’s (founder of QST), Richard Andrews from Zurich Insurance, assisted contractors in developing “Formal Quality Control Programs,” akin to the construction industry’s earlier formalization of safety programs. In the early 2000s, Richard and Brian were tasked with creating the original quality programs at Hoffman Construction. One night over dinner, they drew parallels between the two professions (Quality and Safety), leading to an article published in Professional Safety (ASSE), with Dr. Sathy Rejendran, dean of Central Washington University, as the lead author, titled “Quality Management in Construction; An Expanding Role for SH&E Professionals.”
Quality and Safety are Synonymous
Question: What do these statements
about quality have in common?
• Quality is job one.
• Quality is an attitude.
• Quality is a journey, not a destination.
• Quality is everyone’s job.
• Quality is a habit, not an act.
• There are no half measures in the
pursuit of quality excellence—you have
to do it all.
• Quality is a new way of thinking, being
and doing.
• Quality is so important it pays for itself.
Answer: The word quality can be inter-
changed with safety.
• Safety is job one.
• Safety is an attitude.
• Safety is a journey, not a destination.
• Safety is everyone’s job.
• Safety is a habit, not an act.
• There are no half measures in the
pursuit of safety excellence—you have
to do it all.
• Safety is a new way of thinking, being
and doing.
• Safety is so important it pays for itself.
Tailgate Safety Meetings are good but there is room for improvement
With advancements in Artificial Intelligence and abundant free information on the internet, why purchase “safety topics”? The simple answer: you get what you pay for. Test any AI system by asking it to generate a topic for machine guarding or load securement. Please try it. Do you really want to trust your employee safety to this? Give it a try, we did…
Our content is crafted by Subject Matter Experts in the construction industry, with each topic undergoing at least two reviews by other construction safety professionals. Each topic is tailored to individual crafts; we don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Please review our team of experts.
One of our main goals is to set the foreman up to win. To do that:
- We have relevant and craft specific pictures and graphs
- Our verbiage is specific to the craft
- Every topic includes 2-4 discussion questions for the foreman to engage the crew, providing an opportunity to discuss site-specific protocols when a GC or Owner may have more stringent safety rules
- If you’re still reading this, contact Michael for a free T-shirt
- Monthly each subscriber receives: 3-4 OSHA type subjects, 1-2 humanitarian topics, and 1-2 risk management type topics
So, the question is:
Why not apply the same successful tool to Quality Control Programs?
Quality Safety Times has done just that!
We have a team of diverse Technical Matter Experts to develop and publish weekly Quality and Safety training sessions specific to the trade(s). Site foremen can use the 5-minute training sessions that are trade-specific to emphasize the importance of the quality of work on the construction job site and educate less experienced tradespeople. This reinforces that quality installation and the reduction of re-work are more important than delivering a poor project on schedule.
Interested?
Learn more about our “Verticals” to see what we can offer your specific industry.