| Summary: | This dissertation describes the development of a computer-based system in support of
construction quality management. The system tasks are derived from the elements of the ISO
9001 standard and are designed to integrate with existing computer-aided project management
functions. They can assist management in: (1) the definition of requirements/criteria for design,
construction, and quality management (2) the development of inspection and test plans; (3) the
tracking of actual inspection/test results; (4) the verification of their conformance to defined
criteria; (5) the documentation of predefined information for assisting the tasks involved; and,
(6) the generation of reports and quality records for the information related to the foregoing
tasks.
A thorough literature survey has been conducted, and antecedent contributions in construction
quality management have been examined and categorized according to ISO 9001 elements.
Highway pavement construction has been selected as an application and illustrative domain to
carry out the system development and validation. A model has been defined for representing the
information used in the system tasks, considering the management information integration of
the design, construction, and quality management processes. It reflects the transformation states
of construction components during construction from raw materials to end products, and the
connection of construction processes to these states. The model allows the classifications of the
requirements/criteria describing these physical states and their respective processes in the
design/planning phase, for analyzing their conformance status during the construction phase, as
well as their potential performance during the operation phase. The central role of the inspection
and test plan has been exploited to link to construction components and processes, relevant
inspections/tests, requirements/criteria, actual results, and nonconformance analyses. A
comprehensive body of expert knowledge, concerning low density and roughness of constructed
pavements, which are two major and critical problems in terms of their impact on the life
performance of constructed highways, has been deduced and collected from the literature. This
knowledge has been organized and documented in formats, which are compatible with the
information model to support future applications of expert systems reasoning technologies for
the identification and/or prediction of problems, the diagnosis of their causes, and the
specification of appropriate actions. Templates have been devised to enable the reuse of
predefined packages of information, which recur from project to project. The system has been
implemented and validated in connection to a project management software tool.
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