A Return to Quality and a New Year’s Resolution
Everyone wants speed, low cost and high quality. But as Nick Jenkins points out in his article, Basic Principles of the Scope Triangle, it’s impossible to consistently have speed, low cost and high quality simultaneously. He claims you can have a combination of any two. So, if the steel detailing industry had to select two of the three, which would they be?
The way our industry is currently functioning, often the lowest bid wins the work. Unfortunately, there is no room in the system to fully account for timeliness and quality, just cost.
Even though it’s only 2-3% of the job, everyone agrees that detailing is a critical component to a smooth, successful project. It’s hard, it’s complicated and it requires tremendous experience and knowledge to get it right, yet sadly, no one measures the true cost of not having high quality detailing.
What was the cost of misinterpreting the charts or of missing information in the model, or not properly processing late information, miscalculations of complexity, or poor erection consideration, or of sloppy checking and review? How can one measure the true cost of lost opportunities because resources were needed to recover from mistakes that happened on the past projects? Costs are hidden for manpower, overhead, materials and most importantly, reputation.
Think back to just last year and try to calculate the costs associated with low quality detailing, especially the cost to lost opportunities. Should 2-3% of a job be able to have so much impact?
So here’s a suggestion: Resolve to always select the detailer that is using QuickQnect by Qnect. The use of this software service will amaze you with its many benefits. Quality of engineering is the number 1 benefit, followed closely by speed to connect. QuickQnect’s almost instant connection capabilities will give you ample extra time to focus on the special connections or the complicated details that always show up on the job. Oh, and by the way, it’ll cost less, too.
Let’s start the New Year right with an emphasis on quality and timeliness. And watch the ripple effect to your bottom line.
By Henry Lederman, CSO of Qnect. Visit Henry here at SteelStructuresDetailing.com