QUALITY AND QUALITY CONTROL PHILOSOPHY

Quality is defined as 1) the standard of something when compared to other thing like it; how good or bad something is. 2) A high standard of level (Oxford Dictionary, 1995).

The word quality usually brings the meaning of excellence or high status. In the engineering sense it conveys the concepts of value for money and fitness for purpose of customer satisfaction (Ashford, 1989).

Brian (1996) stated that “Ask a few people to define the word ‘quality’ and it will soon be apparent that opinions vary very widely indeed. Some people will say’ the best’, others ‘value for money’, whilst some will offer the definition of ‘fitness for purpose’”.

Quality has been variously defined as value (Abbott, 1955: Feigenbaum, 1951), conformance to specification (Gilmore, 1974), conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979), fitness for use (Juran, 1988), degree of excellence and meeting or exceeding customer’s expectation (Gronroos, 1983). On a wider scale, the countries which have developed a reputation for quality products would results a low rates of inflation, low unemployment rates, currencies stability and high growth rates.

Globaltester (2002) on the other hand tend to define quality control as “A function where control of the quality of a process or a product is exercised for the purpose of preventing undetected production of defective material or the rendering of faulty services as well as checking for conformity with applicable standards.”

Quality control is essential to the construction industry. Especially a large number of contractors use quality control methods to improve productivity and efficiency to eliminate the cost of rework and to increase customer satisfaction. However, quality control is sometime overlooked or being ignored by the building contractor because it is seen as something that might get into their way against gaining as much as profit as possible.

The above is part of a paper, Abdelnaser Omran, Abdullah Mahmood, Cheah Kok Seng, Abdul Aziz Hussin & Abu Hassan Abu Bakar. 2007. Quality controls measures practiced by Malaysian contractors: an evaluation, paper presented at International Conference on Built Environment in Developing Countries, organized by school of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Date 3-4^th December 2007.