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PLUMBING CONNECTION Winter 2022
DIGITAL QA TICKS ALL THE BOXES
D
igital platforms using mobile
devices like smartphones
and iPads have affected all
industries, including commerce,
healthcare, education, retail, hospitality
– and now building and construction,
most notably in relation to the delivery
of evidence-based quality assurance
(QA).
QA in construction in recent decades
has sometimes been a ‘hit and miss’
affair, with many contractors and
subcontractors regarding their sign-off
obligations as ‘just another step’ in the
long bureaucratic journey towards job
completion and invoicing.
All that is changing. As happens so
often with major worksite innovations,
‘big construction’ (more than 25
personnel) is at the forefront of
cutting-edge reforms. This means
contractors and subcontractors wishing
to gain work with larger companies
need to be aware of these new digital
platforms – and willing and able to
use them. NB: digital QA platforms
are increasingly being adopted as
mandatory
procedures on worksites.
Furthermore, it seems inevitable that
digital QA practices will trickle down
from larger companies to small-to-
medium firms, as smaller outfits gain
familiarity with the technology and see
the many benefits of keeping ‘as you go’
digital records.
Why is digital QA so revolutionary?
Daniel O’Donoghue, co-
founder and Director of CONQA,
which creates and manages
customised digital QA
packages for the construction
industry in Australia and New
Zealand, says in-the-field
digital QA processes allow for
real-time data collection (including
imagery) that would be impossible using
traditional paper-based methods.
The primary motivation for using a
digital QA platform, Daniel explains, is
quite fundamental: a desire to create
better buildings. However, there are
plenty of additional advantages of
embracing digital QA.
“You remove as much of the
guesswork as possible from
the process,” Daniel says.
“Contractors and subcontractors
are professionals – they know
what they’re doing – so digital
QA is really just there to
make sure everyone
has completed
things right, that
everything is in
order, and they
can just move on with peace of mind
knowing they have checked everything.”
By creating a
meaningful
sign-off
process with real-time digital QA,
workers are motivated to deliver peak
productivity and performance in the
first instance. Signing off work ‘as you
go’ also removes the need for lengthy,
time-consuming, often imprecise,
retrospective reviews that can add
hours of desk work to a working week or
month.
“Digital QA, I should add, is also
massively used as a protection device,”
Daniel says. “We’ve got examples of
customers who have been able to
reduce their insurance premiums
because they can demonstrate that
they have done work correctly: for
example, the ability to prove that a fault
was attributable to a post-construction
Historically, worksite quality assurance has been a paper-based, retrospective chore rather than a
genuine record of procedural excellence. However, on-site digital QA platforms are changing the way
contractors and subcontractors sign off their work.
John Power
reports.
CONQA on site with Premier Services Group on Queen’s Wharf Brisbane being built
by Multiplex.
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Daniel O’Donoghue,
Co-Founder and
Director of CONQA.