A computer-based system for construction quality management with application to highway pavements

• Main Author: Battikha, Mireille
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11096

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.