Quality of Roads

Last week I went to UTM Skudai for my weekly lecture and also attended a meeting for deciding the winner for the UTM AKNC (VC Quality Award). On the way from Senai to Persada, where the meeting took place, the airport taxi driver (a Chinese about my age) talked about why flash flood occur in JB. He gave a laymen's reasoning on why it occurs. He complained on how small the size/width of the drains are, and also he emphasised in his broken Malay that 'rumah makin banyak buat tapi itu longkang sama saja - kasi besar/kasi dalam lah) literally translated as -more houses are being built (around JB there are many housing estates), but the drain are still of the same (size) - why don't make it bigger/deeper. I thought to myself, even this 'taxi driver' can think of how to resolve the problems. I just cannot understand why those who have been paid to do the job to think such as the engineer/s and planners at local council, contractors, consultants/architects cannot think like this taxi driver. I guess people are so tight up with their busy schedule that they don't solve these problems faced by the people, and mind you it is our own people, i.e. Malaysians that we are going to help at the end of the day.
Then how does it relate to quality. Well, I have always said that quality of construction can begin right from design step. During the design and planning stage, those responsible, be it technical peole and policy makers, must put the people's interest first, and MUST pro-activley design for the future use, not just for immediate solutions. THINK ABOUT IT.
I have not talked about poorly maintained drains - all clogged up with rubbish and sand. Don't tell me the taxpayer will have to clear the stucked drain by himself, is it not the job of the local municipal to check and rectify these drains. DO YOUR JOB MEN.

Designing Quality

High quality products and services must start from proper planning. Quality should be designed into products and services, taking into consideration customer requests and requirements. The design stage involves many steps all focused on confirming, verifying all new methods, technologies, materials and functions that has been proposed and developed. They must be tried and tested before the new design can go through the production stage. Wastes are produced from defective designs that are passed on to production, and vendors. It is acknowledged here that it is not an easy process, there are difficulties and all must comply with legal and commercial requirements. Come to think of it, achieving high quality products through good design must be set as a challenge to all organizations to survive especially in this difficult times.

Design Quality into Goods and Services

Quality in design means ensuring you have captured and incorporate all your customer needs from your products and services. Customer can be internal, external, user, maintenance people, public authorities, enforcing agencies/bodies, etc. Quality must be built during design stage. Design must ensure products are 'easy' to be produced, 'easy' to be checked and inspected, easy nice, fun, good for the user to use, and does not pose major problems (safety, usability, performance, etc) to all people who will come into contact throughout the life of the product/goods/services. Maintenance and after sales personnel must be able to disassemble and reassemble the components/systems of the products easily and time desired. Spare parts to replace broken or damaged components must also be made available so that repair time is shortened and customer is happy.

I don't buy a car to be put at the service centres for repair or waiting for spare parts to reach before repair work can be done.
Design for manufacturability is an aspect needed to be learned and applied by engineers. Construction industry has not advanced much in term of design for constructability since a number of infrastructure projects have faced with structural and quality defects even after it has been used for quite some time. The MRR highway in KL is a case in point that I can remember.

My suggestion is Think about How to Build Quality INTO all our Artifacts/Products/ and Services. It is difficult, I know, but, tell me what is easy in life?