Quality Assurance

1. What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance is necessary for successful building outcomes. Quality assurance of all work should occur at all stages throughout the building process, from project inception to final commissioning and handover. This enables the early identification and remediation of any shortcomings in design and construction, resulting in efficiencies and savings in project delivery. It is also a very good way to demonstrate the quality of work. For us QA would be NDT of key structural elements. We at CSI believe that having a real grasp on the way a building or structure is being built is paramount to any engineer, designer or owner. The use of early QA helps ensure that contractors and installers work to the highest possible standard.

2. When would you use Quality Assurance?

QA should be undertaken frequently and randomly throughout the entire construction stage for
example:

• Pile integrity testing should be undertaken on a large sample if not all piles to test for defects, with concrete piles they should be tested 7 days after poured and prior to any structure or connection being placed on the top of the piles.
• Concrete scanning for voids, reinforcement cover and location This is probably the service that is most overlooked at the construction stage for QA. In our minds this should be undertaken on a wide number of elements at the construction stage as we often see voiding within concrete, very low cover and lack of reinforcement.
• Drossbachs and Grout Sleeves We are currently very busy and involved in many projects that have been built in the last 15 years where we are being engaged to investigate grout fill and bar identification within drossbachs and grout sleeves, we have ability to undertake this through NDT and are very proud to be market place leaders in this area. We are currently working closely with some engineers to develop a spec for QA on new
  buildings.

3. What are the Benefits of Quality Assurance?

Well…why wouldn’t you? We are involved so often in jobs where if some measures where put in place to carry out some independent QA there very likely wouldn’t be any need for us to be involved in the project at a later stage. We are seeing time and time again the massive expense and time that is being spent on post construction investigations, legal disputes and remediation works. QA undertaken randomly and frequently will have a positive impact on construction quality, it will also allow demonstration of the quality of work as well as catching issues at a point in which they can be remediated more cost effectively.

Please do contact us to develop a system that works with your project protecting the investment.