Private-public partnerships (P3) are increasingly becoming significant mechanisms for delivering public infrastructure projects in industrialised countries, and recently in Canada. Although the concepts of quality management have been successfully applied in many industries, primarily manufacturing and equally to the construction industry, the P3 project delivery presents new challenges. The trend away from traditional method specifications to end-result specifications and the downloading of quality responsibilities to the developer/builder brings with it the need to verify quality performance. A quality information management system becomes a necessity given the volume of the information generated. This paper discusses the challenges and the experience gained from developing and implementing a quality information management system for a P3 project - the Fredericton-Moncton Highway Project. The development addresses key requirements; support for various levels of management (technical and executive), an open data structure and inter-operability, hierarchical information levels, integration with facility-wide management information, and future scalability. The developed system addresses the needs of quality information management for a private project developer but can also be adapted to other project delivery mechanisms. The tool was implemented to support the entire project team including construction field supervisors and project's senior management, etc. The paper offers a documented analysis of a generic implementation process that can be adopted in other projects to improve efficiency in quality information management in the construction industry in general, and P3 in particular. (Author/publisher)
Abstract