President's Blog

For a number of years, I have attended a convocation held by the insurance company that provides my firm's professional liability insurance. This convocation focuses on loss prevention in the architectural and engineering liability area. The firm analyzes the claims against their insured and conducts numerous surveys. 

The company has identified a number of factors that drive risk in an organization. These include project management, client selection/management, contracts, lack of qualified staff, sub-consultants, compressed schedules, contractors, slow reaction time to solving problems, scope creep and project type. While much of this is focused obviously on the consulting industry, I believe it does have application to government, industry and contractors. While the end result in these organization's activities might not be litigation, it could be an unsuccessful project or dissatisfied users and clients. 

The insurance company particularly focuses on the role of the project manager relative to managing risks. This individual is in the front line, but not always trained to be a risk manager. The project manager is sometimes not well versed on contract languages. He or she manages the relationship with the client usually very well but doesn't always see obvious signs of client dissatisfaction. The manager is just too close to the trees to see the forest. Unfortunately, many project managers are not involved in contract negotiations and pre-qualifying go/no-go decisions.

The focus of the convocation is education and discussion around these risk drivers as well as overall quality in the design and constructed project. The company firmly believes that leadership is critical to instituting and managing quality. Understanding the mistakes that firms make is critical to quality improvement. Having a vision for the firm also is a positive driver in quality management and a firm must be dedicated and attack the challenges to creating and maintaining a high level of firmwide commitment to an effective quality program.

ASCE has a number of continuing education programs and webinars that focus on project management training, quality assurance and leadership development. My firm has utilized a number of these educational opportunities, particularly the webinars. What is your firm doing to create a quality culture?