Statistic method to estimate the quality of work in housing construction

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a method to estimate the quality of work performed by masons in lowincome housing construction projects. The method described is focused on measuring the level of fulfillment of project's construction specifications in a context where usually quality control standards for construction processes either are not followed or do not exist. The method starts assessing standards to qualify the performance of masons. Measuring procedures included in this method are based on direct observation to identify the level of fulfillment of those standards. These standards were defined for three quality levels (QL) reflecting the fulfillment of project specifications during the construction process. With the QL data, weighted quality levels were obtained and applying a Quality-Index-Sampling (QIS) method, the quality indexes (Q) were calculated for each activity. The Quality index is a parameter used to estimate the percentage of defect (PD), and allows the identification of critical activities that should be taken into account due to non-fulfillment of project specifications. Benchmarking of two different housing construction projects proved the usefulness of information obtained through this method to aid the identification of factors affecting on-site labor quality.