[Dennis:] what she's going to do.
[Clare:] Right. Erm I'm here as a representative of a small company from York, called and what we're doing is we're working on behalf of the Group, who compile and publish the English Dictionary. And what I'm doing here today is, I'm recording this seminar as an instance of spoken English in the nineteen nineties. Which will go towards making a corpus of information from which will draw the meaning and usage of words as it was in the nineteen nineties. And this information will be linguistically analyzed, and then used to help compile the new dictionary which will be coming out in a few years. So I thank you all very much for taking part in this, and I hope you have a happy seminar.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Dennis:] The people at the back may not be picked up on this so erm
[speaker003:] He should be here any minute.
[Trevor:] Right. Good morning ladies and gentlemen.
[speaker003:] Morning.
[Trevor:] [cough] Sorry for coming in under the wire at er nine fourteen according to this clock. Erm Hugh's asked me to open this morning's erm quality seminar. Erm a a you're in for quite a good day. I know that er the seminar which I attended sparked off quite a lot of lively er debate. And er at the end of it I think we all felt we knew where we were going, and, and what the work that we'd put in over the last three years on the management procedures, which form the foundations of our quality system. Er I think we came to realize what that work was all in aid of.... The management team had, I'll sit down if you don't mind, the management team has decided that we were going to go for quality because it was a matter of survival. The industry which we are part of is in [cough] excuse me, is in er... sorry about this I've dashed across here [whispering] []... I I'll read from Hugh's notes if you don't mind. Erm I would like to remind you of my objectives quoted at the time in th in the quality manual. Er to adopt best practices, er from the various offices, to help produce a better end product. To delegate decision making down as far as possible. And as far as our group's vision statement is concerned, to be acknowledged as the leading consultant in the rail er in the field of railway engineering. To provide a professional service satisfact I'm sorry Dennis, would you just excuse me? Can I hand over to you? I I I do apologize. Right. Sorry about that....
[Dennis:] Sorry I'm totally unprepared for this. Erm [cough]... To start at the top and unfortunately I'll reread Hughie's notes. Perhaps wavering slightly. Erm It's now thr nearly three years since management procedures were introduced as the first stage of our aspirations to become quality assured.... And I would like to you, remind you of my objectives quoted at that time and as are stated in the er manual. That is firstly to adopt best practice from various offices, which hopefully would help us to provide a better end product. And to delegate decision making er to as low a level as possible within the organization, compatible with safeguarding er the quality of the product that we provide to our clients. The group as you are aware do have a vision statement, erm which has been published er and it was er developed a couple of years ago er great effort by the er management team. And that vision statement is, to be acknowledged as the leading consultant in the railway i in the fields of railway engineering. To provide a professional service satisfying our clients' needs and exceeding their expectations. To be a well trained, dedicated and highly motivated team and to be committed totally to safety. Now that vision has not changed. That is still the group's er vision and stated objectives. Erm as far as certification of er th the of a system is concerned er we are still comm committed to getting office certificated and as many of you may be aware the Swindon office has actually overtaken us on the B E S side erm and they are er, but hopefully we will achieve certification for the whole of our group erm prior to Swindon achieving certification for their whole group. The subtle difference is tha that Swindon are going function by function and getting er five certificates. Er ours is a slightly more difficult task, I would suggest a much more difficult task, in that we're trying to go for one certificate for the whole of the group. Erm... we believe, er if we are to demonstrate to our clients that we are as good or better than our competitives competitors, then we need certification. And this is seen as a matter of survival. Er fairly recently we were asked to tender for erm a new station at Rickmansworth for Crossrail and one of the prerequisites of that job, er which was a ten million pound project, er one of the prerequisites of that job, was that we should either be certificated or at least have a quality assurance erm system in place. And because er we do have a quality assurance system in place although not certificated, er we were able to tender for that work. Otherwise we would have not been able to tender. Erm... I think I'll leave this up till....
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]...
[Dennis:] The basic message of quality, which Mike will er explain later on is, if you improve quality your costs decrease. Because you are continually reducing the number of mistakes that you make and continually improv improving. Erm and therefore you produce less wasted time, less remedial work er and a cheaper product. Erm... quality could be regarded as an empty word. We need to bring it about, and it can only be done through teamwork. That's the point that Hughie has set as one of his objectives for the next twelve months, is to get the group acting as one team, and not five or six separate teams. Erm this is going to be extremely difficult because the British culture is one of every man for himself. People tend not to work particularly well in teams in this country. Erm but it's something that we need to work at. And th the Japs actually score in this because they actually believe totally in teamwork. Erm we need to change our culture.... Erm I think really I'll just leave it there cos I'm a bit struggling, struggling a little bit to remember quite what Hughie was saying. If you appreciate I was actually thrown into the very deep end. I think perhaps what's going to be said to you to the rest of the day erm will actually bring out the key points tha that Hughie was trying, trying to make. One was that quality is here. Quality is here to stay. Quality is improvement. And the other aspect is one of working as a team. I think those were the two main messages that Hughie wished to get across today, and that we will concentrate on er during the rest of this seminar. Erm th that the seminar is going to be lead by Mike. Er Mike is from Associates and Mike has been helping the, the Q A team on a part time basis, and putting some sensible thought into how the group should go forward. Erm but before Mike comes on I would just like er Norman to make a few comments er on his commitment to the group's er quality system....
[speaker003:] [whispering] []
[Norman:] Morning. Er quality. Definition of quality, right product at the right time, at the right price. Now in P Way Design we have no problems with that, do we? Or do we? Erm we are the most profitable part of the S A U. No problems about that. Er we've no great problems with our technical results, and where they are we sort them out quite amicably with the area people. We meet our main deadlines, which are normally the key deadline normally the S and C. We meet it don't we? So there's no problem. Or is there? Just looking at it in a bit more detail. We're profitable but we normally don't compete with anyone else for getting the work. So effectively we put in what is a fair price, and we get the job, and we do it normally within the price or within a slight overspend. But where we have competed, accidentally in one case, deliberately in another, we've been undercut by our rivals and we haven't got the job. Also a good pointer where we've been able to compare ourselves with civil engineering scaled fees, which was on the Overtown Bank Slip which was a job which went completely right, perfect no problems. If we'd have put in a price based on A C scaled fees, we would have overspent by a hundred and fifty five percent. So we thought. So perhaps there's a, a little bit of work we can do in er [cough] in that sphere. The right time. How many times have I had someone come and say, can you sign this drawing please it has to go, go to John tonight. He's taking it for the meeting tomorrow. Er how many times have we said, yeah, we can do this job but we'll, it needs the route improvement that we're doing for Arthur. Or er, Arthur's in no hurry. Well Arthur is a very reasonable and good friends with us. But he notices, it builds up, he starts thinking to himself, they're always late. It's no great problem but I'm not getting it on time. Yet he begins to notice if we do it. Think about our finished product. I said you know the minor er faults and discrepancies, we er tidy up quite amicably with the area people normally. But what we've got to bear in mind is that minor faults in our design can be very serious when translated to a job on the ground which. Also the person who has helped us sort out maybe come to sensible engineering conclusion on the minor problem, but be saying to his chief, there was a problem with the York though I just managed to sort it out. And that builds up. Also what you've got to bear in mind is that inherent in any permanent way job is the capacity for something to go wrong. And when something goes wrong there's recriminations and when there's recriminations, people will crawl for ways out. That is the time for there to be nothing wrong with our drawings. Drawings can be blamed when er there is actually nothing wrong and people are looking for an excuse blame from themselves. So again for reasons like that, we have to maintain the confidence of the client. And that today is what it's all about. If the client is confident that he's getting the best deal from us, he will say, alright Birmingham ar are cheaper than York on a route improvement say, but I've had one of their cheap jobs before. I'll, I'll stick with York and get value for money. Erm drawing the client, is he has confidence in us say, well York have got their act together. If the S if the S and if the S and T give them a, a fair crack of the whip. There's no problems with York, they always given me a good service in the past. And the er technical quality of our drawings... the client if he has confidence will say, who are you trying to kid? York drawings are good. just just yarning You're trying to d divert attention erm erm disturb discrepancies. So it's a question of us retaining, because to a certain extent we already have it, due to our customer past. Retaining and renewing customer confidence. And this is where B S five seven fiv five O certification or I S O Nine Thousand and one certification is important to us. As Dennis has said from er Hughie's erm erm er statement, it is a requirement nowadays. And it's valuable to us in, in three aspects. First of all, certification is a bedrock of achievement, like having a degree, and you need a degree or an H N C or an O N C. It's a statement in itself. More importantly, it's er conveys to the client that we care about quality, that we've gone to the trouble to set up procedures which make our product as good as it possibly can be.... And thirdly, it has a very real er value in that, in going for er certification, we are actually putting checks and procedures in place which will help to ensure that what we do is the right price, is to the right time and is the right product. So that's basically all
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Norman:] er just one after thought, Dennis mentioned teamwork, now we we've been together for a few years basically, but you might say, we work as a team, everyone gets on, everyone helps each other out. We do within P Way Design, which is probably the best office I've ever worked in for that. But what we've got to bear in mind is that we are a multi-functional group. There's PICAS involved, works office involved, to a lesser extent B E S. So that is really where a weakness is, it's in perceiving the needs of other parts, parts of the group. That's something that we do have to work on and I can't emphasize it too strongly. Okay. Er I've said a lot so I'll er leave you to Mike to take things further.
[Mike:] Thank you very very much Norman that's great. Have you all got a programme in the folder? So that you've got a vague idea of er what's going to befall you for the rest of today?... Okay? We'd very much like you to feel free to ask any questions or comment er er on, on the er presentations during the course of the morning. Er and this afternoon. So don't hesitate to ask questions or, or discuss points which you feel erm have not be made very clearly or perhaps with which you don't even agree. And let's try and resolve any issues which, which come up like that. What we want to do [cough] this morning is erm tt talk a little bit to you about er the quality system and the I S O Nine Thousand procedures and er documented er systems, which have been developed so far within the whole group. Er and we want to try and explain a little bit about... tt how far we got in terms of achieving certification to I S O Nine Thousand. [cough] But we then want to er explain w what this business of quality planning is all about. Because we believe very very strongly wi that with an organization like yours, where each piece of work that you do is slightly different from other pieces of work, to have er a single m way, an approach to following the work er is, is really not, not the right er thing to do at all. What we're looking for is... a quality system and a set of procedures which are flexible enough to enable you to handle the slick jobs, which you haven't got a lot of fee income for. And we want you to able to handle the, the complex jobs which require an awful lot of checking and a a a lot of er a lot er detail because the fee for the job is i is, is higher, and the job complexity is high. Er and we [cough] we want to be able to have a mechanism within our I S O Nine Thousand system, which enables us to tackle different jobs of different, different complexity. So that's er essentially this, this morning's er er programme, and the objectives which we want to try and er look at and achieve. First and foremost though, we want to go back to basics and erm get our ideas absolutely straight as regards what quality is and what we're trying to achieve with I S O Nine Thousand. There's a lot of misunderstanding about I S O Nine Thousand [cough] and I think that Norman's er analogy a few seconds ago is really, really rather good. If you're asking a civil engineer to do some work for you... i if that civil engineer has a degree does it automatically mean that the work's going to be perfect and wonderful?...
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] [LAUGHTER] No. [cough] It doesn't does it? Erm but there are certain civil engineering activities which e I'm thinking perhaps more about the bridge design side of things really, but there are certain activities which actually demand a certain level of qualification before you, you can actually sign, sign off drawings or a or agree to calculations or whatever. Yes? So the fact that you've got a degree or an H N C, or whatever, is actually a starting point. It it's, it's er a, a level from which you y you er you progress and it's the same with I S O Nine Thousand or five seven five O. It's really no guarantee of perfection, but it's, it's a sort of measure. It is a level, a starting point and perhaps er we'll, we'll pursue this concept during the next er hour or so. Let's, let's look at what quality is in basic terms.... We've got somebody from the Oxford English er dictionary compilation er arena, with us today and I, I, I'm almost tempted to ask Clare [LAUGHTER] what wh what, what the definition of the word quality is actually []. But do you know what the, what a typical dictionary would give as the definition of quality? We s it's a word we use quite a lot. Wh wh what's, what's the definition of the word?...
[speaker003:] [cough]...
[Mike:] I told you they'd be quiet to start with.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [cough]...
[Mike:] Any ideas? What do we mean when we use the word quality in normal day to day language?... We use the word often enough don't we?... Any ideas?...
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] We've got all day, yes. We started early.... Come on.
[speaker003:] Perfect. Excellent. Above average.
[Mike:] Excellent. Perfect. Above average. This is great, yes. Any more ideas?... The Oxford Dictionary tempers the word excellence, or perfection, with erm a piece of phraseology, degree of. Erm... now what's the problem with this definition? If you ask two people to go away and do the same job with a degree of excellence, are you to get the same result at the end of the day? From the two different people? It's not really a very clear definition is it? From a work point of view, degree of excellence, it's, it's too vague. So unfortunately, we're not able to manage quality if we use the dictionary definition of degree of excellence. We need to have something better, or something different. So this is the first problem where w we, we talk about the management of quality. We have to change the definition of the word that we've grown up with over the years, otherwise we really can't manage the concept. And this is where all our problems start. It would have been nice actually if somebody had said, we're not going to have quality management, we're going to have uck management. Or something like that, then we could have of, we could have redefined this, this new word and we wouldn't have had these awful confusions that we get. But what we have to do is completely junk the definition of the word quality that we've grown up with over the years. But we still use the wretched word. So where do we go? Well I think that a number of you might have seen that definition of quality. Have you come across fitness for purpose?... One o one or two nods. Thirteen blank looks. Four co one or two people completely disinterested. That's not, that's fair average [LAUGHTER] really isn't it I think [].
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Now this definition, fitness for purpose, erm fits in very nicely with I S O Nine Thousand and the requirements in, in the quality systems standard. Er it's a little bit vague, is fitness for purpose, but it fits in with I S O Nine Thousand quite well because of the con of another little concept. We're talking about concepts rather a lot this morning. How do we find out what the purpose is?... If we're going to do er a job?... Right. Where do get the specification from?
[speaker003:] The client.
[Mike:] Yeah. The hint behind this phrase is that it wouldn't be a bad idea to talk to the customer, talk to the client. Erm I know this is a bit of shock horror to some of you. I mean the client what do they know about anything? Might as well go and talk to the doorpost as some of your clients, mightn't you? But the theory is that if we, if we get to know what the, the purpose er o o of the job or, or the assignment is, er then we, we stand a slightly better chance of er getting a satisfied client at the end of the day. However, it's still a vague definition and we often find it more useful to er... tidy that definition up by introducing, conformance with requirements. So having, having found what the er the purpose of the exercise is, what, what the job is, that we're trying to do, we need to beef up the detail a a and start to define requirements. Now actually this is a very very good definition of the word quality. It's a very good definition, but what are the potential problems with that definition?...
[speaker003:] Requirements have changed.
[Mike:] W we've got a problem I think with the word, word requirements, er in several senses and Al Alastair you're absolutely right on that. Er it's a bit like shifting sands [LAUGHTER] at times, isn't it []? And... you know very well that as soon as you start to launch yourself into the world of contracting... by, by its very nature a contract a a automatically [LAUGHTER] has loopholes in it [], and the more you write in a contract the more loopholes you've got. Therefore it's actually quite difficult to define really really accurately requirements. Let me give you another, another example, if you're going to ask people to clean a railway carriage... what do you mean by clean?...
[speaker003:] Do you mean inside or outside?
[Mike:] Say inside.... What do we mean by clean? Well if you're going to ask some poor devil to clean er a carriage out isn't it fair to tell them what it is you mean by clean? What result you want at the end of the day? But what do we do in practice?... We just say here's a bucket. Here's a mop. You know, you know what clean is. Get on with that. Well that's not fair is it? Really? On the individual? Because it means you can always criticize the individual, for either not having done the job well enough or for having not done it quite the way you thought it ought to be done.... I think that's a good example of where defining requirements is, is quite difficult. And where defining requirements is difficult what tends to happen is that we don't bother.... Now this is where I think the Japanese score dramatically, they spend many many hours defining things which we say it's not worth the effort to define.... And if we put a little bit more effort into specifying requirements more tightly, then there'd be less argument at the end of the day as to whether [cough] we've done a good job or a bad job. And I S O Nine Thousand and quality management is very much about trying because it is, it is hard work and we can't necessarily succeed i i in every situation. But it's about trying to define requirements to the, to the best erm level and best degree. [cough] And then setting out our way of operating to, to meet the specifications and requirements that we've set for ourselves. And the fitness for purpose at the back of all this, indicates that it's not a bad idea to talk to the client. Because if you define requirements in an ivory tower and you don't talk to the client, you're gonna produce something which isn't exactly what they necessarily want. Now somebody very very er cleverly brought up the word client perception... and in fact we h were given the definition earlier from Hughie's notes, of meeting and exceeding customer expectations.... But if we are going to meet expectations of clients then really we have to know exactly what it is the client needs and would be happy with. And we have to specify internally to us what will meet the client needs and even just exceed the client needs. And that is what we have to do within the time and organization constraints which Norman er [LAUGHTER] correctly mentioned earlier []. And the whole business of managing the time, the resources and the, meeting the specifications is, is very much a matter which quality management addresses. Now as we go on I'd just like to bring in another er thought for you... is that view-graph correct?... There is no high or low quality. Is that correct?... Geoff's giving us a really really positive nod over there and a lot of very very suspicious people round the table, Geoff who don't agree with you I think.
[speaker003:] ...
[Mike:] What do you think? Do you agree?...
[speaker003:] I would think that in the terms that you want to define it in, that statement's true but I wouldn't necessarily agree with it.
[Mike:] Right.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] Sorry to be awkward.
[Mike:] No. No. This, this is, that's, that's really great. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. But you see what we've got here is this problem of the old definition of quality, still lurking there in the mind, quality is a degree of excellence, therefore you have high quality and low quality. But if we, if we junk that definition, and then go to conformance with requirements... we either conform with the requirements, as Geoff said, or we don't.... Now a very important issue in relation to conforming with requirements is that... we can go over the top, we can go O T T as we say.... Now then, is going over the top and spending more money and producing an absolutely stupendous job, fabulous result, is that quality?... And the answer is, no, it isn't. Because you haven't managed quality. We've got an excellent result at the end of the day, but what's the point of having an excellent result if we're bankrupt next week? And what does it tell us about our management?... W what we have to do with quality management, is introduce the horses for courses idea. I mentioned earlier the quick, slick jobs. We can't put all the bells and whistles, and all the, the checks and all the consultations and design reviews onto a job which gives us a fee income of er two thousand pounds.... We, we do have, you do have some small cheap jobs which have to be attended to very efficiently.... That's not to say that these won't be quality jobs. It's just that the quality, the conformance with requirements, will be defined differently. Okay? So we don't have low quality jobs and high quality jobs, we have quality jobs with different standards attached to them. And I think this is perhaps a slight confusion because very often, would you agree that we tend to use the quality and standard interchangeably? High standard, high quality? Low standard, low quality? Yeah? Whereas what we're trying to do with this new definition of quality now is get the idea of conformance with requirements. Er over t to ourselves. If the requirements are modest er modest requirements with modest standards, it's still a quality job if we achieve what we said we're going to do. A and the, the key to the quality idea is that we manage job in order that we achieve the modest standards and satisfy the client at the end of the day accurately. Now this, this is a difficult thing to, to take on board when we are used to idea of quality being degree of excellence. Wouldn't you agree that in normal day to day language if we see a line of cars going down a road and one of them happens to be a Rolls Royce we would say, that's the quality car? Yes? Th that would be a a normal use of the word. But in fact is a Rolls Royce a quality car if you want to go shopping and you want to be able to park it in small paces places and get round multistorey car parks?... You know all those scrapey marks on multistorey car parks? They're all made by big cars.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] So we have to accept that a car that might be fit for the purpose of shopping in, in, in a town where the parking places are small and the multistorey car parks are difficult to drive round, er er a quality car might be a Mini.... As long as it doesn't break down. Is that, is that reasonable? So quality can be a Mini, it can be a Rolls Royce. It is not automatically always a Rolls Royce. And we hopefully are going to manage our business in such a way that we can accept that a Mini is, is a quality result. If that is what we specified we wanted in the first place. Ca can you live with that?
[speaker003:] I, I, I can see what you're trying to do I just think
[Mike:] Great.
[speaker003:] distorting the definition.
[Mike:] Yes we are. Yes we are.
[speaker003:] the multistorey car park. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] pay his parking ticket.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] You'd get clamped. [LAUGHTER] Would you be able to afford the two hundred pounds to get it out of the parking?
[speaker003:] And I understand exactly what you're saying it's just that erm
[Mike:] W we are
[speaker003:] trying to change definition.
[Mike:] This is why I say it's a shame that we
[speaker003:] usage.
[Mike:] it's a shame that we, we still carry on using the word quality. Isn't it?... T to talk about quality management. It would have been better if we'd got another word really. Yeah. So we are we are twisting the definition if you like a and, and er redefining the word which is most
[speaker003:] Why?
[Mike:] unfortunate.
[speaker003:] Why didn't the word standard get put in the place of quality we can have standard assurance as opposed to quality assurance?
[Mike:] I think one of the reasons for that Geoff is that standard... in itself is a slightly narrower word. And it tends to be used in terms of the tolerances that we've got on our drawings the word quality which has been amplified into the arena where we may actually use it to describe the whole management of the operation, not the management of the, or the second part of the tolerance of the specification. But i in, in theory there's no reason why, why we couldn't have done s sort of upset the word er standard I suppose rather than quality. But anyway w w we're on board with the the general thing which is important. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I've been a bit steady getting there, but I think it's an important issue to tackle that, quality is horses for courses and we have to accept the fact that we're gonna get prestige type jobs and quick slick jobs, especially in the beginning of March every year.... Right. Where did quality management come from? Well, I think some of you may possibly have seen this view-graph before. Have we a got a, a visitor?
[speaker003:] ...
[Mike:] Ha. Messages. [LAUGHTER] What a surprise. Right. If we erm look at the origins of quality.... If we go back to the middle ages we had the situation of craftsmanship, where one individual was responsible for the design of what they were doing, the selection of the materials regarding what they were doing. That individual was responsible for using hand skills... and producing a result at the end of the day.... And people... lived or died by their ability to, to produce a competent result at the end of the day. And that was fairly literal if you think in terms of the village blacksmith making a sword. [whispering] Which was about the most complex technology in those days []. Then a few hundred years later we had the industrial revolution, what was the big step change from craftsmanship to the industrial revolution?... It was the technology wasn't it?
[speaker003:] [whispering] Yes [].
[Mike:] [whispering] Yes. It was the introduction of technology []. What did that do for skill levels?... It produced a small number of highly skilled people didn't it? The tool makers and the people with their machinery and all the rest of it. B but for most of... [tape change] erm really debunk. There are a lot of people like that weren't there? Who were brought in at a very level. Now so erm craftsmanship in, in er in some respects was lost, although there are, are these points I have mentioned. And what was found was that the new technology didn't produce a hundred percent wonderfulness.... To coin a phrase. It didn't produce perfection, and so people introduced inspection. They introduced inspection at the beginning of processes, they introduced inspection, part way through processes and they introduced inspection at the end of the th the total process. Why do we have inspection part way through the process?... Why didn't we just check things in at the beginning and check things out at the end?
[speaker003:] So you didn't waste your time if the product that was no good half way through.
[Mike:] Yeah. It's it's to stop adding value to stuff that's already rubbish isn't it? Stop wasting It's a matter of waste control. That's right. Erm and inspection got pretty sophisticated. I've put quality control as something slightly separate from inspection. Would anybody like to hazard a guess as to what we could possibly mean as the difference between these two words?
[speaker003:] Well you have two different kinds of quality. One. One might....
[Mike:] Right. So you're saying that an assessment of the inspection results is quality control? Well you've gotta have a definition or a standard to inspect against really, I think Geoff, as well. Otherwise you can't say it's good, bad or indifferent. But I am actually trying to get at is a slight development of what you've said. You, you, you we you were virtually there in terms of our standard understanding of these two words. Quality control is inspection with a formal feedback to the pr process. To the production process. Okay? Inspection you just, you just sit, sit there and weed things out. The good from the bad. Quality control actually formally takes the results back to the production process people, and tells them to, to adjust the process. And then we have quality assurance. [cough] This came along only in fact in the, in the late nineteen fifties early sixties. Quality control had become terribly sophisticated during the er war time era... When i a people realized it actually took longer to inspect a bullet than it did to manufacture it.... So what they did was introduce statistical techniques whereby not every bullet was inspected, a sample was inspected and great conclusions were drawn from very careful examination of a small number of, of items. Now this is all very product orientated isn't it? This, this quality management? Well what happened was that in nine in the nineteen fifties the late nineteen fifties the Americans designed and, and built six Vanguard rockets to try and catch the Russians up.... And they failed. Erm [cough] tt this is supposedly how they used to teach their kids how to count. Erm what happened was they, they got three Vanguard rockets to the launch pad, lit the blue touch paper and they exploded in great clouds of flame and smoke six feet above the launch er area. But they'd got three left. So they dissected them all with a fine-tooth comb [LAUGHTER] getting mixed metaphors. They, they brought in a heap of people to disassemble these rockets and inspectors as er examined every, every part of the rockets. They found nothing wrong. They screwed these three rockets back together, the remaining ones. Lit the blue touch paper and they all exploded in great clouds of flame and smoke six feet above the launch pad. And they realized that all their efforts in controlling quality by inspection and so on had failed. Now this particular exercise was, in fact, a major project, in management terms it was very similar to what you do.... You manage projects don't you? Very small projects and some quite large ones. And some lessons were learnt from that exercise which were enshrined in documents called Quality Systems Standards. And the lessons learned were, how to manage projects better than we'd been managing projects before.... Typically when we have problems we say, ah, the materials weren't quite right. Or we made a little fault with the design.... We didn't quite manage to construct the er item concerned adequately. We never ever have the right resources. We have people problems. And typically what we do when things go wrong is, we scurry around and sort the materials out. We allow ourselves a little bit more time to get the design right cos the reason we got it wrong in the first place was because it was a quick spend project and nobody er had time to do it properly. Erm construction, well I don't want to cast too many nationalistic comments about but there is a strange habit of employing people who do not know what they're entirely supposed to be doing. Erm resources is always a problem. We get paid and promoted for rushing round and solving problems wh that we've created for ourselves. Don't we?... There are other problems as well that we'd have to tackle. Poor planning. Erm I presume you're no different from other people? Planning is a er it is a historical activity? Isn't it? It's about reporting what you did last week? Planning, isn't it?
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] Yes.
[Mike:] Yes, I think we've got a culture block in this country with planning. Erm jus just to make you feel a little bit more comfortable about it...
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Mike:] er occasionally I go over to erm Hull and to run some training courses for. They've got an international training centre there, which used to be a monastery. [LAUGHTER] It's a terrible place. And erm yo you have these rooms the size of wardrobes you know? Absolutely dreadful. Anyway erm occasionally they will inflict upon the group a German person or a Swiss national. And when we give the people syndicate or group exercises to do, the group with the Swiss person or German person in it is subjected to, [mimicking] now what is it we are supposed to be doing now? We must write down the objectives of this exercise. We must plan what we are going to do []. And the Dutch and the English put up with this for about fifteen seconds.... And then they take their jackets off and rush down the road at five thousand miles an hour and when you say to them, but you're going in the wrong direction. They say, well that doesn't matter. We're having a good time.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] You know? We're busy. We're enjoying it. I think we have a, we do, a, a slight culture block on planning. Erm overbooking work. We're squeezing quarts out of pint pots. You've all got friends and relations in... er other jobs and they've all been struggling for the last two or three years haven't they? Under a lot of pressure trying to get quarts out of pint pots and I think y you you've suffered the same way. Erm never mind the quality, feel the width. You know, just get the stuff out of the gate.... Poor plant equipment is something which is, probably doesn't affect you quite directly. Erm but it would affect the people you deal with. Poor supervision. I don't mean poor supervisors, I mean at every level of management. We don't seem to get the supervision quite right, we either over do it or under do it. Poor specification. We're back to this business of quality is conformance with requirements. How much effort do we put into defining the requirements? Misunderstanding of contracts, deliberate or otherwise. And it's a well known scientific fact that quality as a degree of excellence equals Rolls Royces. Equals something that's incredibly expensive and it's a jolly good idea for other people. If they can afford it. Okay? So these are the sorts of problems we get. Now the American space scientists asked this stunning question. They said why do we get poor materials? Why do we get poor designs? Why do we plan badly? Why do we have poor supervision?... And that was the answer. There are three possible answers. Acts of God, junior staff and management. Now I know some of you will find d er find it rather difficult to distinguish between those two.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] But in all seriousness what percentage of our problems are caused by hail, rain, wind, snow, blow, fire and earthquake?...
[speaker003:] Small amount.
[Mike:] How [LAUGHTER] small []? [LAUGHTER]
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Well what percentage would you say? Guess. Think that's reasonable?...
[speaker003:] It depends if it's the wrong sort of fog again. [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] It depends which country you're in as well. But by and large
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Mike:] it's less, it's actually less than one percent. Er what percentage of problems are caused by these terrible people?...
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Well shall I tell you what the directors of the construction company said? They said ninety five percent. Then they said we do accept some responsibility for about four percent of problems. And the reality is of course?
[speaker003:] It's the other way.
[Mike:] It's the other way round. Yes. Management have to take responsibility for over ninety five percent of the problems we get, whether they're [cough] safety problems, quality problems or whatever problems. So... what do we do about this? Well we er the obvious er immediate i idea would be to sack the management and promote the junior staff.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] [cough] I think you're safe Margaret. [LAUGHTER] they didn't believe that.
[Mike:] Right. So what do we do about this?... Cos management are causing ninety five percent of all our problems so what are we going to do about them?...
[speaker003:] Reeducate them?
[Mike:] Let's, we've got to look at what it is that management are making a mess of. And we've gotta look at a training programme haven't we? Again, if we go back to the example then it's not too personal to then is it? Erm we have twenty people in, in a group and we go around and ask then how much post school technical and professional training they've had, we would come out with an average group of a total of about a hundred years of post school professional and technical training. If we go round the same group and ask them how much management training they've had, we'd be lucky if we could dredge up fifty weeks.... Because i it is assumed management is learned by picking up the bad habits of your predecessor and their predecessors for the last five hundred years.... There's not very much really formal management train in fact as an employer, is, is really rather good compared with most people we come across. In the outside world. And in, in fact in this area. We have some wry wry smiles from some of the older people er in the group here because they er didn't get much when they were at the formative stages of their careers. Right. What I've done now is taken you through to the point where, we're asking ourselves what is it that management make a mess of?... And what can we train management in to be better? Well the answer is the index of I S O Nine Thousand and One. Because what I S O Nine Thousand and One is... is the result of the investigation that the American space scientists did in nineteen fifty nine, to find out what areas management are weak in.... And they identified in nineteen fifty nine eighteen areas of management activity that management consistently made a mess of. And in fact it's grown to twenty areas in the intervening thirty odd years, so that's not bad emp empire building really is it? thought it might have been one hundred and forty eight by now but it's not. But it's grown to twenty areas. Now I S O Nine Thousand and One is nothing more, nothing less, than a list of things that management should address a little more carefully. There's nothing revolutionary in I S O Nine Thousand and One. There aren't any bolts out of the blue. There aren't any stunning new ideas, or concepts. It's all really rather boring actually. But... what it tells us is that in these twenty areas, management should try and think about what it is they can do to prevent problems.... With the best will in the world we're not going to be perfect first time round, so we've got to have detection interaction mechanisms. But in I S O Nine Thousand and One there is also a thread of quality improvement, in each of the areas which we're supposed to address. And the quality improvement is once we have found that we've got a problem, how do we stop it recurring? How do we stop the same type of problem recurring? There's a learning curve. The theory is we do not invent the wheel every day.... Right. Now I want to hand you over to, to Dennis hop hopefully not too belatedly Dennis? And erm what I'd like is for Dennis is to explain a little about how far we've actually got with the C E D G approach to the introduction of I S O Nine Thousand. So having introduced the idea that I S O Nine Thousand is about improving our management competence, it's not about improving our technical competence, we are technically very good. It's the management that fails us. Er I'd like to r er throw it over to Dennis with the er stage there, so that er we explain how far we got in addressing these management shortcomings issues. Alright Dennis?
[Dennis:] Right. Thank you very much, Mike. Quality in management systems. Well Mike has explained that quality isn't quality.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Dennis:] Erm and management doesn't. Er so you can be even more confused with quality management system. Erm... the next session is rather hard work for you cos it's very much sort of listening and absorbing a hell of a lot of facts, but I trust you will bear with me. And it does get easier towards lunchtime when we allow you to play.... Erm the management team is committed to the group's quality system. And the management team expect all staff to be equally committed. [cough] The system incorporates procedures which are designed to assist staff in carrying out their work in a planned, consistent and economic manner. And procedures are intended to foster and not inhibit the exercising of professional engineering judgement and creative problem solving. That's what Mike has just said. The group has got two aims, one is certification of the system to I S O Nine Thousand and One, and the second very important one is the continual improvement of the system as er to make a change in working practices, and business organizations and reorganizations.... Like all things these days we have a quality policy statement. Erm this is bound up in the group's quality system manual, which will be distributed to you on Monday. Er and much of what I'm going to say today in the next twenty minutes i it's bound in here, so there's no need to take notes. It's, it's, it's there to be read and to be worked to. [cough] The group's policy is produce work of a quality commensurate with the requirements of the job. Rolls Royce versus the Mini scenario. Quality, completion on time and safety are regarded as indivisib indivisible and quality is of course of paramount importance in our railway environment. So how do we achieve quality? You may disagree with it, but this is the management team's stated view of achieving quality. We need to have an organization structure with defined individual responsibilities. We have established procedures for carrying out the work. We agree clear remits with the clients. We ensure that those remits are fully understood by the project team before work starts. We insist the conceptual design, and I'm underlining conceptual design, is the responsibility of the function and section engineers, who have bottom line responsibility for each project.... We allocate specified assigned tasks to staff, with the necessary skills and abilities to undertake those tasks. And this experience can be gained either by formal education and or on the job training. If you haven't got the skill you should not be asked to undertake that task until you are trained or supervised. We encourage good internal and external communications. And as we brought out first thing this morning, communication within the group, that is across the functions, and also in some cases within the functions, is poor. We act as separate cells, we need to act as a team. We insist that all work leaving the office... is suitably checked, and I underline the word suitably checked. The degree of checking is determined by the section engineer responsible for the project.... We recognize that every member of the group can contribute to the development and improvement and success of the group, and we encourage every member to make their contribution to the group's success. Now there's nothing new, revolutionary, exciting in that. That is all good, sound common sense and hopefully that is what we are currently practising.... If we just first look at the organization that we have, or perhaps more correctly will have following consultation, erm I think you will agree with me that the, the roles and responsibilities of those people are fairly well defined. The group engineer, function heads and project team and section engineers. If we just quickly look at the role of the project coordinator. The man in the middle there. Or person in the middle. Sorry. All work within the group is assigned as projects, and for each project a project coordinator is appointed. Project coordinator will almost invariably be a section engineer. However, when the complexity of the job demands it, he will be a function engineer. In addition to their other responsibilities, the project coordinator is responsible for a number activities. He is responsible for developing and agreeing the total C E D G remit with the client. Not the function remit, the total remit.. He is also the formal point of contact between the group and the client and as such he is required to coordinate the group's, group's activities on a giv given project. He will, in cooperation with section engineers and team quantity surveyors, develop project quality plans, and we'll explain those later today, and he will also sign off the project quality plan and the client's appointment contract. Additionally he will sign off client reports. And the client reports are a single report covering all the functions on a specified project.... The section engineer, who can also be a project coordinator,a as I've explained, is responsible for directing the group of project engineers and for overviewing all aspects of the project within his section, to ensure that they are technically adequate... t to ensure they are technically adequate, have quality and we are providing safe service to the client. He is also responsible for appointing the project team within his own section. And also responsible for preparing the project quality plan for his section. The project engineer is responsible for the day to day development of the project and he will undertake the requirements of a project quality plan to meet all the necessary current standards. And the project engineer will be assisted by resident engineers, designers, detailers, quantity surveyors and not forgetting, of course, clerical support. We tend to forget the clerks.... And that really is the fundamental principles behind the management procedures and the group's quality system. It's what we've been working at for the last three years.... The set up I've described there aligns itself with the manner in which most consultants work. In essence, the section engineer is equivalent to an associate, and takes bottom line responsibility for all his projects. That is completion on time, to spec and within the fee-bid.... Let's look at the group's procedures with emphasis on the quality system. Our quality system, like any other, has two interrelated aspects. They are our clients needs and expectations and our own needs and expectation and i interests. As a service organization, we must continually meet the needs and expectations of our clients and in the most economic way. To meet these aspirations we must make the best use of our human, technological, material and financial resources and this must be done within the framework of a well planned and a well managed system. Our clients also need the assurance and confidence that we have the ability to provide a service which consistently meets their requirements. Therefore it is necessary to maintain documentary evidence that our system not only exists, but is being operated as intended. And the above factors form the basis of our quality system. Very much a regurgitation of what Mike said this morning. If we just look at that system and the hierarchy of documentation that forms the system, hopefully things will start to gel with you with regard to the management procedures.... At the top we have I S O Nine Thousand and One. Erm beneath I S O Nine Thousand and One we have the group's quality manual. And the quality manual are the white sheets contained within this red folder. Beneath the quality manual we have quality systems and qual sorry. Sorry. Quality system procedures which also include project quality plans. And beneath those we have the much loved management procedures. This in essence is the key for the group's system. If we look at management er procedures... Could ask the question but I'm, the mo more cynical of you will er not answer in the right way, what are management procedures? They aim to collect together the best practices from within the group. Those that have been found to work. And then to communicate these to all of our staff. They're quite simply a collection of directives.... Or instructions which advise the staff how a particular project, how a particular task is undertaken with guidance on why we do it. Who is responsible for the task, and who makes the decisions. Which members of the organization need to be involved in that task, and which don't. And they also contain the standard pr proforma used within the group. They're live documents which are subject to revision as the organization changes and as we improve. And they are there to be worked to until such time as we find a better way of doing it. They provide uniformity across the group. They ensure that best practice is adopted. They cut out Spanish practice and job creation which is rife, or has been rife, within some quarters of the group. In essence they are the group's instruction manual, or practice notes as our architectural mem er colleagues prefer to call them. Quite simply they are documented work statements for specific activities which rationalize and standardize the current working practice throughout the group.
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Dennis:] They can be considered under three headings....... There are those which address the acquirement the requirements of I S O Nine Thousand... and One [whispering] I S O Nine Thousand []? I S O Nine Thousand and One through project quality plans. Those which fulfil the requirements of I S O Nine Thousand and One erm through quality system procedures. And those which have absolutely no affect on the quality of the service that we provide to our client, but they form Board requirements, legal and other requirements, admin arrangements, local instructions and policy. That is, is drawn to scale. Seventy five percent of what is contained within the blue manual, has nothing to do with the quality of the service that we provide to our clients.... What we've attempted to do is to put all of our instructions into one manual, so that we don't view quality as an add-on or something extra. It is all part of living and breathing, doing things that come naturally.... Does that help? Begin to help?...
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Dennis:] If we then look at the quality manual, which is the, the white document, contained within here. This is very much an overview document and describes the way in which the group conducts its business. It is the document which can be viewed by our existing and prospective clients to enable them to gain an insight into our quality system. It defines how our quality system relates to us and our activities. And it describes how the requirements of I S O Nine Thousand and One are satisfied within the group. And it forms a reference document to the full scope of a quality system. And it is the document which the quality auditors will initially use to check that the quality system exists, is operating and is fit for the purpose. Now because the quality manual is very much an overview document, we need to introduce more detailed documents which control the day to day operation of the quality system. And these are called the quality system procedures. And again they're bound in here. There are seven quality system procedures. In essence these are stand-alone management procedures except they are printed on pink paper.... I'm not numerically dys dyslexic by the way, I put them in that order [LAUGHTER] for, for a reason []. We have quality system procedure number one, which is the quality reference summary. This will be used almost exclusively by quality auditors at the start of the audit trail and provide a simple matrix. Er and this is an extract from, from it, it provides a simple erm matrix which identifies the clause in I S O Nine Thousand and One, and then identifies which management procedure or quality system procedure er relates to that particular clause in I I S O Nine Thousand and One. This starts to unravel the blue book, hopefully, and identifies those which refer to the quality,whi which are quality procedures, and those which are the other procedures.... Q S P Six er gives generic job descriptions and sets down broad responsibility statements relating to quality and safety.... Q S P Seven, project quality plans, we are going to be talking about in great detail after the after coffee, and also through your playtime at lunchtime.... You have to remember that all work assigned within the group is organized as projects and as a service organization no two of our projects are identical. Consequently those sections of I S O Nine Thousand and One which deal with project specific act activities, are addressed through project quality plans. Quality system procedures two to five, provide the mechanism by which our quality system is constantly reviewed, updated and improved. And this afternoon Mike is going to be talking about nonconforming product control, corrective actions and internal quality audits. Erm and this is really the mechanism by which you can ensure the continuous or continual improvement of the quality system. And it echoes the group's quality statement that recognizes that all staff have a voice, and this voice should be heard. These procedures will give you the opportunity of getting your voice heard.... Quality system procedure two, talks about how the management team pick up suggestions made by yourselves through Q S P Three, and set about making decisions for improvement of the group's quality system, the service that we provide to our clients. And that really is group's quality system.
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Dennis:] And hopefully I've ou I've hopefully you've found nothing too painful in what I've outlined there. And hopefully I've shown you the key that unravels some of the mystery of the blue book. The blue book is really our instruction manual, and the red book unlocks that to help us identify those procedures which affect the quality of service that we provide to our clients. Erm now, the other thing I mentioned at the beginning was certification of the system. And I recognize there are a few people here, here who are not P Way people. Erm... Works, Q S, Business Manager, B E S have been through the same process as you're going through today. Erm and you are currently here erm and your teach-ins. Tomorrow the other half of the P Way section will be having their teach-ins and on Monday the intention is that quality system procedures, quality plans etcetera, will be introduced within the P Way office. Currently working in the works office, Q S and the business managers and B E S. And in the middle of June the bridge office will be going through the same exercise and June the nineteenth, I think, it's the Monday everyone within the group will be working to the group's quality systems.
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Dennis:] And we're shortly to appoint some erm consultant assessor who will assess our system, and we will run our, have our system in place for a period of about four months. Er and I'm quite sure there'll be quite a bit of change to many of our procedures. There are currently procedures which are absent, which will need to be introduced. And the intention is that by the end of this year our system will be certified to I S O Nine Thousand and One.... Okay?... And that
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Mike:] I'd just like to say one thing Dennis. What's the difference between B S five seven five O and I S O Nine Thousand?
[speaker003:] I S O Nine Thousand is an internationally.
[Mike:] Yeah..
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] [cough]
[Mike:] Yes. There isn't any difference. It's the same document. It's just that erm the I S O version, as you quite rightly say, is sort of recognized and used in other countries. And the fact that it's got a B S label means that it's the, the indigenous one to the U K really. But the content of I S O Nine Thousand and B S five seven five O are the same. the same.... We're using I S O Nine Thousand as a result of Board policy. Okay. Coffee time.
[Dennis:] Yes. We're, we're currently running about fifteen minutes late. Lun lunch time is fixed for twelve so we must get.... [tape stops and starts]
[Mike:] Did you?... [tape stops and starts] Is?
[Clare:] Yeah.
[speaker003:] tape running?
[Mike:] I should perhaps apologize on behalf of the hotel for the temperature in the room this morning er I stayed here last night and woke up to find that not only was there no heat in the radiators, but there was no heat in the hot water. There wasn't any hot water. They had a major boiler breakdown last night. Two boilers failed. Er so, so there's a distinct lack of central heating. Even more remarkable lack of hot water so if you can bear with us on that I can see we've got some out outdoor fiends who are quite happy to be sitting here without any jackets on but other people doing, doing the opposite.
[speaker003:] for Dennis. [LAUGHTER]
[Dennis:] window to cool it down?
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Yes. Erm something we did omit, which we should not have done, earlier was to mention the fire escape scenario and that is that if you go out of this door, just the coffee table there's a large marked fire exit. So if we hear any screeching noises or bells, which er don't turn off after a very very short period of time, we are to er make our way in an orderly fashion to the er base of the staircase of the fire escape, following the fire escape er signs. Something we should have mentioned earlier no doubt about that. But er I think from a comfort point of view er if you do feel the need to go to the toilet, please don't er think that you've got to put your hand up and ask.
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] If, if, if, if you do that you'll have everybody wanting to go. Right. Are we ready
[speaker003:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] to reconvene?...
[speaker003:] [cough]
[Mike:] We had a very very quick introduction to the idea of I S O Nine Thousand at the end of my little session. I S O Nine Thousand is nothing more, nothing less than a list of management activities that need more attention. More careful attention from the average management group. Dennis explained how the C E D G documented quality system is structured. And I now want to introduce the idea of quality planning. And then in a few minutes Dennis is going to join with me in explaining to you how we are going to make the quality planning procedure work for you.... We've already decided that a typical organization will in fact use the same procedures and work instructions on all its work, because an, a typical organization manufactures ice-creams. Or it makes nuts and bolts. And they do the same thing day in day out. And the way in which a hierarchy of documentation is structured in such an organization, is by having policy from which procedures are developed, from which working structures cascade. Now, it is possible to force-fit this type of approach into your kind of work. But it's not very practical and it's not very sensible. Because you're going to need different procedures on different projects, and you're going to need different degrees of checking, and different degrees of emphasis on the different types of project that you get. The prestige project, the complex project or the quick, slick project.... In terms of your organization, I think we've got something and it won't surprise you, a little bit more complicated than the normal Trebor Mint factory, or whatever. And what we have are as follows, one, a manual, which Dennis mentioned in the red folder. Core quality procedures which we've separated out into Q S Ps One to Seven. The job descriptions, the nonconformance control, the management review. How to organize a quality plan. We've got the admin instructions, how to go and claim your expenses. How to hire a car. We've got various procedures within the group management procedures. Now, what we have to do is organize for ourselves a mechanism whereby, for any particular project, we use the procedures that are necessary for that project. We do not invoke the use of every single management procedure and every single quality procedure on all projects. Otherwise we're back to that for force-fit trian triangular approach, as evidenced on the previous view-graph. Now the key to explaining to people doing any particular project, are which procedures is the quality plan. So for any particular project we want a quality plan which will tell us what the client brief is, tell us which procedures we're going to use from the suite of procedures available within C E D G, and following the dictates of the quality plan which will be individual for each individual project, we get an output. There is a procedure on quality planning and that's what Dennis is going to er be talking about very very shortly, and this will explain how we generate an individual quality plan. But I want to, I want you to get the idea clear in your minds about what a quality plan is. So, first and foremost, it's the mechanism which selects the appropriate procedures from within the C E G, E, C E D G documentation to help you er run a project in a managed way. Now, why do we have quality plans? Well they achieve quite a lot. They introduce standards for project management. A quality plan will include objectives for the project which are agreed with the client. Remember when we defined quality earlier, we talked about fitness for purpose? And that involved talking to the client to find out what it was they wanted? What their expectations were? Perhaps even perceptions? A quality plan will explain the scale and er numbers of checks that are involved. The I S O Nine Thousand document actually allows quite a lot of self-checking. It's very...