Enabling Quality in Lean Construction: Integrating the Principles of Total Quality Management with 9D-BIM

Recently Total Quality Management (TQM) has been proved to be the most successful continuous improvement system. The total quality management (TQM) process has been considered a modern system in the field of quality, after quality assurance, quality control, and ISO in the Construction sector. Although it was initially implemented in the manufacturing and automobile industries in Japan, later it was adopted by the construction sector. Design and construction are the two important phases of the project life cycle that affect the quality of the outcome of construction projects significantly. The current quality management practice in the construction industry includes issuing quality checklists, site inspection and testing, non-conformance reporting, and corrective action but there is not a systematic way of recording the inspected data, hence, the quality status of construction cannot be determined. The newly emerging technologies such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and lean construction can be used to control the quality of construction. One of the most popular management system standards among construction companies is ISO 9000—the construction sector has the fourth highest number of quality assurance certificates of all sectors in the world. A positive relationship between ISO 9000 certification and firm performance was observed in 69% of existing cross-sectional studies. TQM and BIM convey some level of association in terms of execution, productivity, information requirements, and quality outcomes throughout the construction process although not much work is done in mapping their common denominators. This research focuses on mapping the TQM elements and BIM dimensions as means of inducing Quality as part of the ninth dimension of BIM (9D BIM). A framework for enabling quality in lean construction through the integration of TQM and 9D-BIM is proposed in this study.