A member of the CQIC Steering Group was recently at a Monthly Quality Meeting on a major project. A problem had arisen with concrete pours and there were extensive areas of honeycombing to columns and walls that were intended to have an exposed finish. There was even an instance of a column having to be taken down due to the poor quality of the concrete. The discussion moved straight to what material should be used to undertake the remedial works to the honeycombed areas to provide the desired finish. When asked to pause and consider why this had occurred, the response from the Project Director was that, “these things always happen!”
In-situ concrete work is indeed notorious for being problematic from a quality perspective. At a members’ meeting of the Get It Right Initiative (GIRI) in November 2024, Graham Construction’s innovation director, Emer Murnaghan OBE, explained how a 12-week pilot study of GIRI’s Error Reduction Framework at Graham attempted to identify the key errors in the contractor’s concreting process, their root causes, and the behaviours required to prevent these errors occurring in the future.
There is more information on this work here – GIRI Error Reduction Framework on Concrete
If there are known areas of work that frequently go wrong then these need particular attention and a strategy for getting it right. It is important that it is not just accepted that “these things always happen!” A quality culture is not just being good at identifying and fixing snags and defects. It is about making every effort to get it right in the first place.
On the project that had the issues with the concrete, the discussion was steered to a strategy to get it right next time. This involved bringing in additional supervision with the required experience and expertise to oversee the works along with tool box talks and further training for the operatives. There was a pause in pours whilst this was put in place, but once the concreting work recommenced the quality of the work markedly improved.