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The increasing costs of construction defect claims including the cost of rework are driving the industry to improve its quality. This article discusses the overlap and parallels between construction safety and quality control programs, referencing research that connects the relationship between worker injuries and rework.
Rework is often considered an error, a mistake or a cost to be hidden, and therefore may not be properly planned (Photo 1). Experienced construction safety professionals would likely agree that projects with poor housekeeping are often behind schedule and over budget, have higher incident and injury rates, and are plagued by callbacks to perform "warranty work." More experienced construction safety professionals would also likely note that such projects frequently have building functionality problems, meaning the building does not perform according to the client's expectations.
Research confirms that a symbiotic relationship exists between poor quality and safety incidents in construction projects. Wanberg et al. (2013) found a positive linear relationship between the recordable injury rates per 200,000 workers and the number of worker hours related to rework per $1 million scope of project completed.
Contractor Selection
The construction industry historically has measured contractor safety excellence through the benchmarking of contractors' experience modification rate (EMR) and OSHA total recordable incident rate (TRIR). Contractor selection processes typically include a prequalification questionnaire. A contractor's EMR; lost-day case rate; days away, restricted or transferred rate; and TRIR are standard metrics used to evaluate a contractor's safety outcomes. Measuring excellence through the absence of events and without a severity matrix is a challenge as well as a poor measuring tool to evaluate a successful safety and health program. Today, most trade partners safety prequalification processes have advanced to include an evaluation of safety programs, sitespecific safety plans, safety orientations, job hazard analysis and weekly safety meetings.
The same challenges exist with the evaluation of contractors' quality control programs, which commonly measure the lack of rework (or lack of claims). Best-in-class quality control programs structurally mirror safety programs via their processes such as inspections and compliance checklists, policy development, prevention through design and implementation (Rajendran et al, 2012). The goal of both the safety and quality control programs is to prevent losses with the prevention of injuries and the reduction of rework.
The True Cost...