Quality control, Quality assurance, systems and application.

The research paper proposes an integrated quality management framework that incorporates Building Information Modeling (BIM) concepts, in order the reduce quality defect occurrences on construction projects. Reducing quality defects on construction projects improves resource utilization, reduces overall costs and project delays, and increases the overall quality of delivered projects. The paper highlights the weaknesses of current construction management practices as well as previous developments of integrating BIM into quality management plans through an extensive literature review. The suggested framework encompasses the core concepts of quality management: quality control, quality assurance and communication protocol. The framework is developed into a working prototype to demonstrate the advantages of this approach. Data collected of quality complaints over several years reinforce the paper’s hypotheses and limits the scope of the developed framework. Meetings with construction professionals in the Dutch industry were conducted in order to receive feedback and develop the quality requirements and the process & product conditional triggers necessary for a quality requirement to take place. The framework utilizes Information Foundation Class (IFC) BIM models and construction schedules along with the previous deliverables in order to generate the desired results. The system was tested on a pilot construction project in the Netherlands, where the full potential of the approach was realized. The findings of the paper serve as an attempt to provide a comprehensive quality management framework that can be adopted within current construction practice guidelines, as well as highlight the advantages of research in this field of study.