2 min read: A Construction Manager was frustrated that the recording and costing of NCRs (none conformance reports) on his projects was inconsistent. This meant that they were unable to report with confidence the impact on costs or capture issues caused by others presenting opportunity for value recovery.
The behaviour he wanted to make more likely was for the engineers and supervisors to recognise, raise and cost NCR’s on each project.
He made the following changes to the work environment to make the desired behaviour more likely:
Knowledge and skills - Briefed people in what was and what wasn't an NCR and made clear the purpose of NCR capture regarding cost control and value opportunity. He also trained people in using the appropriate system for quality reporting and the ownership / procedure for resultant actions.
Triggers – They brought NCR reporting and status into the weekly cause and effect and monthly contract review discussions. Additionally they held monthly focused quality meetings set up to specifically look at QA/QC as a standalone topic.
Influencers – The project was driven and encouraged by the management team with expectations cascaded and consistent goals all set.
Reinforcement and feedback – They started thanking people for raising NCR’s and looking for lessons learnt. They also held feedback sessions to with teams on positive quality improvements with trends captured / training needs identified, also capturing empirical KPI information and feeding back to lessons learnt reports.
Over a three month period the number of NCR’s raised increased by over 80%, with the percentage costed increasing from 4% to over 40%.
"The ability to change behaviours by being consistent and shaping the environment is within all our control. Recognising and praising good and identifying and managing poor behaviour is key."
allison@sciencebasedleadership.co.uk