Bridges

A high level of quality during construction is a fundamental requirement to ensuring that a concrete structure performs its intended purpose and achieves its 100 year design life with minimal maintenance. To this end contractors must control the quality of their work in order to satisfy the performance standards as prescribed in the design drawings and specifications. Quality procedures and the required inspection and testing should be implemented in practice to verify full compliance and prevent the occurrence of faults and defects which will become major risk factors with respect to durability and negatively impact the service life of a structure.

Although time, initial cost, safety, environment and traffic are key parameters in the delivery of accelerated construction projects, the construction quality is the only one that has a permanent imprint on the long term performance of a structure and indeed is the only parameter that will be measured over the entire life of a structure or project. As such the time and cost objectives of a project as important as they may be, must not be achieved at the expense of quality. Quality must be front and centre of the various construction activities and be taken seriously by all stakeholders of a project and must be driven both from top down and bottom up. It must form an integral part of tool box meetings and indeed it must be a standing agenda item with specification requirements forming the main discussion points. Both quality control and quality assurance must monitor, verify and provide ongoing confidence that the various construction processes are undertaken in an effective manner and that the required quality and specified standards of acceptance are satisfied.

This paper highlights the importance of construction quality, discusses quality issues identified in the construction process and further highlights the importance of compliance to the specified requirements and the significance of ensuring product conformity in the production and construction process.