Integration of Quality Management System in the Malaysian Construction Industry

Quality management system (QMS) is defined as the managing structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes, and management resources to implement the principles and action lines needed to achieve the quality objectives of an organization. QMS is conventionally being associated with the manufacturing industry as it is used to direct and control an organization with regard to the end-product quality via various QMS manufacturing models, namely Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the ISO 9000 quality standards, Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma and Lean. However, since the construction industry appears to be going through a period of introspection, with the increasing of technological innovation in design concepts, use of new and unique materials, novel methods of construction, complex social issues, rapid environmental change as well as obnoxious problems of delay, over-budget and low quality, QMS is observed by this paper as the solution to this dilemma. Hence, this paper aims at appraising the integration of QMS in the Malaysian construction industry. It is expected that the findings of this paper would help the project management team of the construction projects to efficiently manage the construction activities throughout the whole project life cycle from pre-contract to post-contract phase via the integration of QMS.