QA / QC FOR CIVIL ENGINEERS

Quality Assurance (QA) is a term used in both the manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic effort made to ensure that the product(s) delivered to the customer(s) meet contractual and other agreed performance, design, reliability, and customer expectations regarding sustainability.

Purpose of Quality Assurance

The main purpose of quality assurance is to prevent errors and defects in the development and production of both manufactured products, such as cars and shoes, and services provided, such as car repair and sports shoe design. Quality assurance, and therefore the avoidance of problems and delays in the delivery of products or services to customers, is what ISO 9000 defines as “the part of quality management aimed at providing confidence that quality requirements will be met”.This defect prevention aspect of quality assurance differs from the defect detection aspect of quality control and has been referred to as a left shift because it focuses on quality efforts earlier in product development and production (i.e., a left shift from a linear left-to-right reading process diagram)and on the avoidance of defects, rather than their subsequent correction.The terms “quality assurance” and “quality control” are often used interchangeably to refer to ways of ensuring the quality of a service or product. For example, the term “assurance” is often used in contexts such as: The implementation of inspection and structured testing as a measure of quality assurance in a TV software project at Philips Semiconductors is described.