Management's Fatal Flaw: TQM Obstacle

Abstract

More than ever before public‐ and private‐sector clients demand documented evidence of a design and construction organization's commitment to quality. At one time, acceptable evidence consisted in proposal promises, followed later by a project quality‐assurance plan (QAP). Generally, this QAP focused on a downstream product‐checking system, looking at technical work performed by middle managers and lower‐level workers, intended to guide their search for errors and omissions. The intent was to assure the release of only technically accurate documents. Fundamentally then, most engineers were trained to believe quality meant that the technical accuracy of their work was defensible. As time passed, these engineers became managers of engineers, with the experience and belief that quality results belonged uniquely to the project team. Now, as many clients no longer accept a QAP focused only on a project's downstream technical accuracy, there is an unprecedented rush within the design and construction industry to total quality management (TQM). In their enthusiastic and sincere desire to get TQM “installed,” due to the earlier career experiences of senior management, there is a tendency to start TQM in ways that are comfortably linked to past acceptable practices. This paper overviews the author's experience in observing well intentioned senior managers who begin TQM by doing the right things at the wrong time. The purposes of this paper are to help guide senior management away from expensive trial‐and‐error piecemeal solutions to TQM; convince senior management that not only their money but their personal participation is required; and to encourage senior managers' to understand TQM starts with their own behavior change.