Contractors with poor Quality Records

Recently ran into a reference of an assessment of pre-qual contractors based on their "quality record".
The thought occurs what constitutes " poor quality records? Volume of NCR's or absence of any NCR's? Number of production failures or absence of failures ever being recorded or brief policy v overly prescriptive etc.
The individual organizations do manage this but is there any evidence/listing of companies/organizations that have failed and what part of their quality system was lacking.
Anyone know of a hierarchy/writing as to what such a list might look like?
Since a principle of 9001 is to continually improve - we have to identify something we can improve for it to become meaningful.

mgcm1 said:

Recently ran into a reference of an assessment of pre-qual contractors based on their "quality record".
The thought occurs what constitutes " poor quality records? Volume of NCR's or absence of any NCR's? Number of production failures or absence of failures ever being recorded or brief policy v overly prescriptive etc.
The individual organizations do manage this but is there any evidence/listing of companies/organizations that have failed and what part of their quality system was lacking.
Anyone know of a hierarchy/writing as to what such a list might look like?
Since a principle of 9001 is to continually improve - we have to identify something we can improve for it to become meaningful.

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I would suggest that NCRs are not a reliable indicator of performance in terms of numbers. Is a high number of NCs good or bad? Both low and high could indicate good or poor management commitment.

How many corrective actions have proven over time or through repitition to be effective solutions may be a better indicator. You might also choose to audit their compliance to the standard and then consider evaluating the level of compliance against the length of time the requirements have been applied to their management system. That would give you a good feel for where they are as a suitable supplier to your organisation

mgcm1 said:

Recently ran into a reference of an assessment of pre-qual contractors based on their "quality record".
The thought occurs what constitutes " poor quality records? Volume of NCR's or absence of any NCR's? Number of production failures or absence of failures ever being recorded or brief policy v overly prescriptive etc.
The individual organizations do manage this but is there any evidence/listing of companies/organizations that have failed and what part of their quality system was lacking.
Anyone know of a hierarchy/writing as to what such a list might look like?
Since a principle of 9001 is to continually improve - we have to identify something we can improve for it to become meaningful.

Click to expand...

mgcm1,

Ask the prospective bidders for their last five internal audit reports and for their last two management system performance reports as considered by their top managers in preparation for their management reviews.

Or, better still, conduct a prequal audit on each of them.

John

mgcm1 said:

Recently ran into a reference of an assessment of pre-qual contractors based on their "quality record".

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"Ran into" in what context? What does "pre-qual" entail?

mgcm1 said:

The thought occurs what constitutes " poor quality records? Volume of NCR's or absence of any NCR's? Number of production failures or absence of failures ever being recorded or brief policy v overly prescriptive etc.

Click to expand...

You would need to know the "pre-qual" criteria and methods in order to understand what the problems were.

mgcm1 said:

The individual organizations do manage this but is there any evidence/listing of companies/organizations that have failed and what part of their quality system was lacking.
Anyone know of a hierarchy/writing as to what such a list might look like?
Since a principle of 9001 is to continually improve - we have to identify something we can improve for it to become meaningful.

Click to expand...

Are you asking if there is any publically available listing of poor-performing companies? If so, there are none that I know of, and if there were the information probably couldn't be considered reliable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is not knowing what the criteria were and the skill/experience level of the people making the determinations.

Jim
Ran into means seen,

Pre Qual means Pre Qualification,

It’s not poor performing companies but failed – ie evidence of the reason for their failure should find a quality measurement system that was not applied correctly or its findings were ignored. With the emphasis being on the past tense so no commercial sensitivity should prevail.
I wouldn’t assume competency of applying a QMS was an issue more the core reason for an organisations failure and whether a QMS was reporting it.
Strikes me as a historic analysis is fundamental to good governance in the quality world if the data is there without it, its all left to such subjectivity.

Gary

Gary,

May we see you criteria for pre-qualifying a bidder?

We may then advise on eval methods with or without using records.

John

The question that really begs an answer when you try to go into this level of detail is who are you to judge? what is your level of competency in this area and objectivity?

It is best that you go along some internationally recognized systems that measures or give some form of ratings on quality. I cannot speak of elsewhere but overhere, Singapore has a well known system termed CONQUAS (Construction Quality Assessment System) run by an independent authority with their own assessors and guidelines.

If I go for prequalification, I will require them to show proof on how many of their jobs were assessed on CONQUAS schemes and the scores achieved (with certificates). Then only can I compare apples to apples (literally). Not sure about your area but many countries now have similar schemes.

In the TS world, we typically document the number of customer complaints, PPM's, delivery performance..... that gives a fair, partial picture of a supplier.
Internally, we usually look at scrap, Cost of Poor Quality, internal failures.
Not conclusive, but it is a start....assuming they are honest in the data reported.

Perhaps that will spur some thinking on your situation.

Thanks all, its something that got me thinking .
The source of the line poor quality records looked like an add on for some criteria for evaluating bids that are submitted. The sort that says i must mention "quality".
I think i would lean toward the interpretation of "absence of sufficient records as = poor", as records of poor productivity can at least be acted on by top management. And for quality to be effective we need something to be wrong to make it right..

mgcm1 said:

And for quality to be effective we need something to be wrong to make it right..

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Gary,

This reactive approach to quality jumped out at me.

Better to select only those bidders who take a proactive approach to planning and delivering quality design and construction.

Solving problems preventively mainly but also able to stop recurrence of problems.

John