Quality as the new safety paradigm

Over the last few years, our industry has experienced a profound recalibration in how it views safety. 

From the introduction of the Building Safety Act to the recent appointment of interim chief construction adviser, Thouria Istephan – whose role, according to the MCHLA, is “ensuring that safety, delivery and accountability are central to decision-making, with residents’ voices at heart” – safety has rightly become front and centre.

Yet safety alone is not enough. It must be anchored by quality, because genuine, lasting behavioural change in our built environment will only occur when quality is as non-negotiable as safety itself. 

Grenfell, inefficient oversight, flawed workmanship and substandard materials are all stark reminders of what happens when quality is neglected. Dame Judith Hackitt’s Building a Safer Future report described how “the regulatory system covering high-rise and complex buildings was not fit for purpose”, adding “we have seen further evidence confirming the deep flaws in the current system”. 

The Get It Right Initiative (GIRI) first published its major research into the cost of quality (or cost of error) in 2016, finding that direct costs of avoidable error typically amount to between 5% and 25% of a project value, or up to £25 billion per annum – roughly seven times the industry’s total profit. 

GIRI established the first baseline for the cost of error. The core message that error costs are systemic and cultural, not just technical, still remains today. There is no doubt that quality is still being overlooked.

These are not numbers to be brushed aside, they signal systematic inefficiency, quality collapse and reputational risk. 

Root cause analyses from GIRI identify recurring drivers, including inadequate planning, late design changes, poor coordination, weak culture around quality, financial/time pressures and inadequate supervisory capacity.

Those of us working in the industry know the dynamic well: as time and cost pressures intensify, quality, alongside building safety, may become the casualty, often with a long list of ‘agreed’ rework to resolve post completion. 

Where good intentions, design and plans for best practice are incorporated at the beginning of projects, financial and time investment, and the race for delivery, often dilute the outcomes.

So how do we work collaboratively to ensure stricter competency for all dutyholders, including designers, contractors and building managers?  

How do we ensure that the industry adopts the right technology and training to be able to create a continuous and accurate record of a building through its lifecycle, the golden thread of information? 

How do we redefine value engineering as the ability to build a quality project at the best cost?

1. Cultural shifts through education and mentoring 

We must adopt stricter baseline requirements, not just for principal designers and principal contractors, but also for building managers and regulatory stakeholders.

The first step of the proactive, pre-emptive cultural shift will be education through coaching, mentoring and guiding project teams and contractors, driven by strong quality management principles. 

Understanding ownership and accountability for quality needs to be embedded from day one so that everyone knows their role and owns that responsibility, not just the onus falling on a select number of roles, such as the clerk of works.  

As a project team, understanding expectations and agreeing on ways of working with quality embedded from the outset is essential to delivering the required standards and minimising the impact of rework after completion. 

Working closely with the building regulations principal designer, there needs to be a holistic approach with a strong governance and approach to quality in the design processes and communicated through detailed, performance-based specification. At every step, key stakeholders should be involved in any change to this specification to ensure that quality is not compromised. 

This quality assurance process needs to be continuous throughout delivery to ensure that the design and specification are converted into the required quality of the work. 

2. Make the golden thread a living reality

The golden thread of information, a continuous, trusted digital record of a building’s specification, change history, test data and maintenance regime, must move from an ambition to a reality – and to all buildings, not just higher-risk ones. 

Integrating quality processes and technology (documented inspections, digital handover logs, version control, traceable revisions) and how safety and quality become verifiable over a building’s full lifecycle are key to success. 

Adopting the principles of the golden thread across our estates as the norm will support risk management strategies, the clients’ ability to utilise and maintain the building and help it achieve its mandatory and regulatory requirements in the future.

3. Recast value engineering

Instead of defaulting to cost cuts, value engineering should be understood as designing for maximising quality at optimal cost. 

Quality can play a vital role in the value engineering process, collaborating with building safety and assurance professionals to take a holistic approach to assess how any change, or series of changes, affects the overall quality of the project.

Early investment in design clarity, constructability and systems thinking often pays for itself by reducing rework and defects downstream, helping to drive continuous improvement.

4. Leverage technology, wisely

Digital tools, AI and automation are powerful enablers when aligned with intent, not just used as red flags at the end of delivery. 

According to the recent GIRI report, Artificial Intelligence and Error Reduction, while AI is already being used to support error reduction in construction, its application remains relatively limited and often experimental. 

However, although AI will always help reduce human error, the need for a ‘human in the loop’ approach has been advocated to audit these new technologies. 

We also need any integrated technology to be streamlined and intuitive, ensuring that it is usable and effective on site so that data collection is a by-product rather than a focus. This will help prevent the system becoming overly complex, burdensome, or worse, neglected altogether.  

5. Move the mountain – early, often and together

Adopt the ‘move the mountain’ principle that advocates for inspecting quality early in the project and remedying issues alongside construction, ensuring that the mountain never becomes insurmountable. 

Using the right tools, with the right people, inspecting and resolving issues progressively through the project with a clear audit trail that stands up to scrutiny will lower cost and have less time impact. Our ambition should be for contractual handovers with zero defects as a norm, rather than an exception.

Above all, work as one, with each individual, each organisation and each part of the process working seamlessly, to promote collaboration, communication and quality alongside health and safety. 

The word ‘quality’ is often bandied around, but the ultimate validation of quality is living proof of how a building performs, how issues are handled, how longevity, safety, sustainability and occupant satisfaction result over time. 

Just as safety is now an industry imperative, quality must become the bedrock of how we build. It demands that every stakeholder acknowledge their role and actively foster a pre-emptive, proactive approach to quality management. 

Quality is no longer optional. It is the credibility, trust and integrity of the built environment.

Vincent Pegg is a partner at RLB.