A week or two ago, we were really thrilled to receive a bunch of awards at the annual BALI awards ceremony at Grosvenor House. We were particularly pleased to get the grand award and the design build award for the same project, a garden in Surrey. The judges were glowing in their comments, describing the scheme as ‘an exercise in perfection’. This is of course very gratifying, and it is great when everything comes together on a project. People often describe it as ‘everyone pulling in the same direction’. This got me thinking about how quality is determined. There has of course been reams and reams written about how to promote and manage quality – TQM, QA, ISO and all the rest. It struck me though that it really has more to do with an organisation’s culture than anything else. We certainly don’t always get it right in this respect, but everyone at B+W has a commitment to high quality that borders on the obsessional. It is difficult to achieve a really good result without staff at all stages of the project being focussed on the same thing. It doesn’t matter how many forms are filled in, how many checks are done or how much snagging. In the end it will only happen because people want it to.
This may seem smug and even a bit facile. But it strikes me that communication, training, camraderie and a relentless focuss on quality are the only way to produce consistently good results in the long term. The bottom line follows – not the other way around.
December 14, 2010
