Page 9 - Graypvine October 2019

Quality

with Trey Griffith
Manager, Quality Management
Systems, Gray Construction

Some of you may be familiar with Gray quality calls,
8 and some of you may not. Our quality calls first began
nine or ten years ago. These phone calls are between
a specific group of team members, with the purpose
of working through any issues that can have an impact
on the company and how we do business. The
quality call group includes a representative from every
department, which makes it possible to move quickly
through all the aspects and viewpoints within Gray.
For example, in the past we had a less than
desirable event happen that drove us to review how
we design our roof drainage systems. As a result of
9 this event, we found there was an issue when it came 9
to calculating the volume of rainfall. We have used
the quality call to work through this issue and others
like it.
I tell this short story to give you a baseline of what
the quality call’s original intent was and how we use it
today. Of course we all know we have seen changes
in the last ten or so years. But one thing we are trying
to hold to is this quality call and its initial idea.
A few weeks ago a project manager came to me
with an issue on his project. The concrete contractor
10 11 had set some embeds that
just didn’t look right. They
were for trench grading
among other things, and
the embeds had deviations
of +/- ½”. When the
contractor was asked what
they were going to do with
the embeds, they simply
said that they wouldn’t be
doing anything; they had
met the specifications. The
specifications called for all
angles to meet American
12 Concrete Institute (ACI) 117, which states +/- ½” is
acceptable. The project manager came to tell me
this story, and after verifying this is what ACI actually
states, I took it to the quality call group. Due to the
nature of this particular issue, we had a representative
from Freeland Harris Consulting Engineers on the line
as well. We were able to make a standard change to
all of their drawings to tighten this tolerance to ¼” on
all embeds unless otherwise noted.
So, how do you play a role in this group? If you
have an issue, especially if it is an issue you have
seen before, please contact me so we can discuss
it on the quality call. This group is set up to handle
issues specific to all aspects of the construction
process. This is just one of the ways Gray keeps up
its continuous improvement philosophy. We need to
13 hear from you — you are on the front lines — and
we only get better if we have a place to focus our
improvements.