Contractors quality plans

Tender documentation

The tender documentation for all projects over £500,000 must specifically require the contractor to develop a suitable quality plan to be adopted within the construction of the scheme by the contractor.

Service Provider's role in auditing contractors quality plans

The Service Provider (SP) will have the following role in monitoring its implementation.

• To ensure at pre-contract meeting and thereafter at monthly intervals that inspection and test plans (ITP's) are in place for the following months work when compared against the programme.
• To make comment on contractors ITP's relating to whether the scope of the ITP's are sufficiently encompassing to ensure that the relevant inspection standards are met.
• To monitor that ITP's are in place prior to the element to which it refers to commences on site
• To make periodic review (minimum monthly) throughout the contract to examine the register of completed ITP's to ensure that they are being carried out and signed off and that any corrective action requests are lodged within the quality plan.
• To track any uncompleted CAR's and non conformance reports and respond accordingly.
• To make periodic on-site inspections to ensure that elements are being incorporated as the ITP lays out. These would be carried out at as a minimum at monthly site visits and at the onset of a major element of work .Where the element is sufficiently important as to be critical to the scheme's success inspection intervals would be increased in line with the demands.

Should inspection by the SP reveal that the quality plan is not being adhered to correctly by the contractor, the SP would have the obligation to issue an NCR or CAR to the contractor for inclusion on the register. The SP would then track the progress of the NCR or CAR to ensure that work is correctly incorporated.

• Contractors quality plan example