Isn’t Life Perfect?
by Jim Dirkes, PE, BEMP, BCxP
Quality Assurance / Quality Control – Nice Idea, but…
After 45+ years of professional engineering practice, everything comes out perfect the first time, just like I expect... That’s a lie (and you knew it as soon as you read it). We all know that nothing comes out perfect the first time, so why do we often act as though it were true?
Here are my common excuses:
• I’m (always) in a hurry.
• There’s too much to do.
• My schedule doesn’t allow it.
Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QAQC) is mentioned in many circles but doesn’t get much action, so I'm going to unpack it a bit here. Simply put, QAQC is a combination of a) putting processes in place to help assure quality and b) then checking to see that the final result has actually achieved the level of quality you need. This isn’t a technical “expert” post, but rather “lessons learned on the way to becoming an expert.”
The Big Picture
Principle #1
Jesus aside, humans have never been perfect. At that, Jesus certainly had challenges, and we (not being God) have no lack of examples in our own lives of imperfection. If we’ve ever seen perfection, it was surely fleeting. The first principle of QAQC is to give grace when we experience the imperfection of others or exhibit it ourselves.
Here’s a mental challenge to illustrate:
You (a woman) get an email from a friend that says: “Woman without her man is nothing.” How does that sit with you? Not well, I suspect.
Then, a couple of minutes later, another email arrives from the same (supposed) friend that says: “Sorry! I was in a hurry! It should have read, ‘Woman: without her, man is nothing.’”
Good thing that friend double-checked his email! Two small punctuations completely change the meaning. Cutting one another slack is essential as we work toward better results. We all make mistakes on the road to improvement, and grace goes a long way to paving peace as we work together.
Principle #2
If we make grace the starting point, does that mean we don’t need to pursue excellence? Willingness to give grace while simultaneously hoping to receive it doesn’t mean you should be sloppy. You rarely get what you EXpect; you get what you INspect. Taking the extra time to review your words and work will always pay off in the long run.
What's the downside of not QAQC-ing?
Here are a few examples from my personal and work experience of what you’d rather not happen:
Ever use a proposal template, make a few edits, and then realize after reviewing it that you’ve left in a competitor client’s name? A slow review helps avoid embarrassment.
I have written sales and technical literature, published it, distributed it widely, and discovered ten years later that it had spelling errors. I hoped that no one noticed, but people may have noticed and decided to buy our products from people who actually knew how to spell…
How often have you sent garbled text messages because you used the voice-to-text feature and didn’t check what it wrote? A few more seconds of review would help.
Energy models’ raison d’etre is to go beyond the question of “Is it better?” and answer the question “How much better?” Detailed QAQC is part of Foresight’s process, partly because of the seemingly minor input errors we’ve made in the past that dramatically skewed the results. We don’t want mistakes to misguide decision-making about performance.
A couple of years ago, state-of-the-art thermochromic glazing was installed on ten floors of a building after a “back-of-the-envelope” analysis showed that it would be wonderful. The people whose offices had that glazing were consistently experiencing 85-degrees in their office in the winter and were not very happy about it. Foresight was asked to conduct a review of the problem. Our analysis showed that the glazing and HVAC system interactions would unavoidably create an 85-degree office environment. Doing that review before installation could have saved a lot of time, money (~$100,000), and headaches.
When I first started commissioning HVAC systems 15 years ago, I thought, “This might be boring; what could go wrong in a brand new building?” It turns out that, compliments of a bunch of well-intentioned, talented, distracted, and fallible humans, there are thousands of ways to screw things up. Some are small and some big, but the purpose of commissioning is simply QAQC – helping to provide a desirable and valuable quality check so everyone is successful and everything works as intended.
Foresight regularly recommends and helps clients change from one electric utility rate to a better rate. Somehow, those rate changes don't take effect when the utility says they will. After following up, sometimes for several months running, we finally see the new rate take effect (and overpayments refunded).
The same has been true when we help improve power factor for a client by getting a capacitor installed. The utility bill doesn’t always reflect the improvement until we send a few reminders.
Compressed air leak studies are great QAQC examples, but stuff keeps breaking, so they always need to follow up next year. “One and done” is not an acceptable strategy to ensure quality.
What Can Be Done?
This sounds like a lot of work. It isn’t.
Who has time for it? Nobody, unless you make the time (or ask somebody to help).
How much is it worth? Like many things, it varies.
Our experience, though, is that QAQC takes a very small percent of the overall effort. It does require a little extra time, so you need to give yourself some cushion in the schedule. It also helps to step away and review later with a clear head and renewed vision. Even better, check it with a colleague. Your colleague, guaranteed, will have a different perspective and almost certainly won't have the same blind spots. Leaning on another’s insights and strengths makes both of you better every time.
The benefit it provides is frequently substantial and is sometimes a complete game-changer. We find that it’s not uncommon to spend money for “something” and get nothing unless it’s QAQC.
So, build QAQC into your projects! A well-thought-out process can build in quality, minimize mistakes, and make results achievable. It's not hard; it just requires making it part of the goals and the process. Setting a precedent for ample review time, peer editing, grace for mistakes, and detail-driven standards will ensure you get (and give your clients) what they pay for. It will be easier for everyone to acknowledge and account for our fallible human nature and respond by building a culture and systems to accept it.