The development and validation of a bar code based residential construction quality inspection procedure

Advances in technology that can be used to improve commercial and residential construction processes and procedures, including quality, are not always readily adopted by the two industries. The purpose of this study was to develop a bar code based quality inspection process that demonstrated the speed and accuracy with which data can be collected and used by residential construction contractors for analysis of quality improvement trends in the homes produced. The study was conducted in three phases. In the first phase a checklist form was developed for use during post-construction framing inspections of homes and validated by a panel of experts. In phase two Code 39 bar codes were added to the checklist, and a proprietary program was developed to gather inspection data via a bar code scanner. Phase three included the field study where data collection was done using two methods. The first method was using the PSC PT40 scanner and the bar coded checklist. This data was compared to data collected using the manual data collection and keyboard data entry method. A database program was used to generate reports from the inspection data for use in evaluating quality trends and performance. It was concluded that for this study the scanner method was 98. 8% accurate compared to 60% for the manual method. There was a 3. 87% error rate for the keyboard data entry versus a 0. 397% error rate for the scanner, and the scanner method was 65. 2% faster than the manual method in providing the data necessary to produce reports and evaluate possible trends in quality.