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Quality

Recording quality lessons so the same defect does not repeat

By Review.LivePublished 3 min readHow we write

Three weeks into a new townhouse job, a water test finds a leak at a balcony door sill. The same defect led to a string of warranty calls on the company's last project, and it appears under "lessons learned" in that job's closeout report. Nobody on the new job has read the report, and the door checklist is the old one.

A stack of printed floor plans and a red folder on a wooden table.
Photo: K O on Unsplash

Construction industry research defines a lesson learned as knowledge gained from experience, successful or otherwise, for the purpose of improving future performance. The same research describes three steps — collection, analysis and implementation — and found implementation typically less advanced than the other two. A quality lesson counts only when it changes something the next crew will see, and it is easiest to act on when collected during the job from deficiency and inspection records, one recurring defect at a time.

That is narrower than the post-project review, which compares plan and outcome on cost, time, quality and client once the job is over.

  1. Pull the repeat defects each month from the deficiency list and the failed inspection items: the ones that keep appearing and the ones that cost most to fix.
  2. Write each lesson in four lines: the defect, where and how often, the cause found, and the change that prevents it.
  3. Attach the lesson to something that changes: a checklist item, a briefing point, a mock-up requirement, a detail or a submittal note.
  4. Give the change an owner and a date, and make it in the company's templates, not only in this job's copy.
  5. Brief the next crew doing that work, with photos of the defect and of the accepted work.
  6. Check the result on the next job, and rewrite or retire lessons that do not change the numbers.

Common mistakes

  • Writing lessons only at closeout, from memory.
  • Lessons with no change attached, such as "be more careful with sills".
  • Changing this job's checklist but not the company template.
  • Never checking whether the lesson reduced the defect.

Action list

This month

  1. List the three defects that repeated most on your job
  2. Write each as defect, frequency, cause and change
  3. Attach each change to a checklist, briefing, mock-up or detail
  4. Name an owner and a date for each change
  5. Update the company template, not just the job copy
  6. Check the next job's records for the same defect

Check your understanding

The company checklist now has a sill membrane item, but the next job still has sill leaks. What do you check first?

Show the answer
First, whether the item was used: whether the new template version was on that job and whether the inspections were answered honestly. If it was used and the leaks continue, the cause in the lesson was probably wrong or incomplete, so go back to the cause analysis rather than adding more checklist items.

Sources

  1. Lessons Learned About Lessons Learned (RT-230)Construction Industry Institute · accessed
  2. Effective Management Practices and Technologies for Lessons Learned Programs (RS230-1)Construction Industry Institute · accessed

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