Quality thinking

His work, along with that of W Edwards Deming, led to the renaissance in Japanese process quality 40 years ago.

In the late 1980s, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) endeavoured to make UK industry aware of this through its Managing into the Nineties initiative, but this was dissipated by Western propensity to keep reinventing the wheel through environmental management, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and now sustainability.

In the process we have lost the knowledge that construction quality is at the heart of a sustainable built environment, as quality is about reducing losses in the process.

Ken Briggs in the article A touch of creative thinking (EMC, April, p21-24) says: “One of the main lessons is co-operation and co-ordination, everyone was pulling in the same direction. Crucially the team also adopted a philosophy of nil defects.” This is pure quality management.

Toyota is now using the knowledge gained through its production system to deliver more sustainable corporate facilities at zero extra cost. In 1984, the DTI arranged a mission to Japan and asked why they let us look at their factories. The Japanese reply was: “Because you are already 10 years behind, and anyway we know you won’t do it.”

The Japanese were right: we haven’t done it.

At Ecobuild, Dr David Strong said a reality check was needed on the zero-carbon agenda, suggesting we need “whole-system thinking, which means collaborative, multi-disciplinary teamwork like we’ve rarely seen before”.

Or as I would say, we need to rediscover the fundamentals of quality management.

Quality and sustainability are two sides of the same coin. Toss it and you can only win.

Derek Deighton, CIBSE Low Carbon Consultant, Lancashire