Quality Management System for Design Consultants: Development and Application on Projects in the Middle East

Abstract

In this paper, the development and implementation processes of a quality management system (QMS) for design consultants in the Middle East are presented. The current design practices are first reviewed through the conduct of multiple interviews. The development of the QMS for designing residential and commercial buildings is also based on quality standards from the literature. The practical implementation of the model is conducted using actual design projects in a real design environment. The model implementation consists of three stages, the first stage is awareness; the second stage is benchmarking of existing practice, which is carried out on 20 projects; and finally, the validation of the model is verified using data from 11 projects. The benchmarking of existing performance and the validation of the model are carried out utilizing statistical approaches. The implementation of the QMS model improves the efficiency of the designs and the production process distributions.