Total Quality Management Seminar

The lack of attention on quality management in construction industry has been proven to be the cause of the high number of adverse events and accidents. Some accidents examples shown in the video ?Top 5 Worst Quality Failures in Construction?were the results of poor-quality constructions. According to QualityInConstruction.com, Online Resource No. 1 for Quality Management in Construction, the five destroyed constructions did not only lead to the loss of fund but also claimed so many lives. Almost all of those accidents were caused by the poor-quality construction, design and material that did not comply with existing standards.

This issue was raised in the seminar conducted at UPH Graduate Campus, Plaza Semanggi Level 3, on February 27, 2015. Andri Panjaitan, ST., MT., Director of Faculty of Science and Technology, as the seminar speaker, said that for all things, quality becomes the most important factor. “In any field, in a world with an increasingly tight competition, one must come up with something different, this will lead to better quality” he said. Similarly, the construction industry faces a huge risk if quality is to be overlooked.

Furthermore, he mentioned three things that must be considered during the implementation of Project Quality Management. They are Quality Planning, Quality Assurance and Quality Control, the thorough stages from start to finish, from planning to control. “The selection of high-quality materials, training and making people aware of the importance of quality, preparing quality standards from the beginning, continuing to control and monitor the process are very important in creating a qualified construction. Maybe higher quality means higher expenditure, but something with poor quality will be more costly in the end. Imagine a construction that is destroyed and causes an accident, we have to pay compensation and it will certainly be in a greater amount than the initial expenditure. Furthermore, there will be a lot of casualties.” said Andri.

This seminar is an overview of the teaching focus in UPH Graduate Civil Engineering, which is the specialization in Project Quality Management in Construction. It was attended by about 100 people who have entered the construction industry, both from UPH Graduate Civil Engineering students and the public. This seminar receives an excellent response judging from the many questions raised by the participants.   “Hopefully, this seminar can improve quality-awareness in the construction industry, specifically for current students of UPH Graduate Civil Engineering and potential students who are interested to join in order to gain a more in-depth teaching of Project Quality Management in Construction” said Andri Panjaitan. (fc/cha)

The participants of the seminar