Training case study: transforming quality culture

Bowmer + Kirkland’s group quality assurance manager Craig Head explains how the company-wide rollout of GIRI training is supporting the organisation’s efforts to create a positive approach to reporting on and learning from error.

Why did you decide to implement GIRI training?

We first heard about GIRI in 2021 after reading some articles discussing efficiencies on construction sites, and we felt that GIRI’s vision aligned with our approach to raising awareness and the profile of avoiding error within the business. We initially booked two pilot courses towards the end of 2021 with a selection of delegates from our regional businesses. Based on their positive feedback, we took the time to plan how many sessions we would require to deploy the training across our entire construction business.

Why did you choose the supervisory and management skills and training across interfaces courses? 

As a managing contractor, we rely on collaboration between our onsite teams and our supply chain to ensure consistent and effective delivery. We recognised that the site teams, specifically site managers, are key to making this happen, therefore upskilling our internal teams was our main priority. Improving communication between our design and project delivery teams through these training courses supports this objective.  

What is the Bowmer + Kirkland Zero Defects at Handover initiative and what role does GIRI training play in this?

At B+K we have been on a transformational journey to digitise our management systems. Previously, our non-conformance reporting on projects was paper-based, so unless you were working on that project, it was a challenge to analyse this data in any detail. We took a tandem approach to solving this issue – moving our NCRs to RDrive, our quality tool, and teaching our people about the benefits of recording errors. This is where GIRI training comes in. 

Historically, NCRs have negative connotations. People avoided raising them as it caused conflict and additional paperwork. GIRI training has provided the confidence in our site teams to promote the use of NCRs in a positive way – we refer to the acronym as Not a Crime to Report – and raise issues on projects to help others avoid them. We want to provide our clients with the best experience, and working towards a Zero Defects at Handover target is seen as an overall time saving, reducing our time spent on a project after practical completion. 

What outcomes did you hope to achieve from the training and how do you plan to measure success? 

Mindset and culture are extremely difficult to adjust, especially in industries where there is a heavy reliance on such a wide and diverse supply-chain. Our main aim with the training was to increase our people’s understanding of WHY quality is important and the importance of being open and honest when things do go wrong. By building a foundation of knowledge internally within our project teams, we hope we can share some of our learning from the GIRI training and get the message across about why it is so important to get it right first time.  

How do you expect this training to impact error reduction? 

Similar to many businesses, we have not fully analysed the cost implications when things go wrong. Now we are aware of how this information could help us measure improvement, we plan to develop a benchmark figure we can work to reduce through mechanisms such as lessons learned.  

However, we can’t put measures in place to avoid future issues if we don’t know what these issues are. GIRI provides a consistent approach to identifying and effectively managing issues and errors. It also directs us to investigate the root causes of errors to enable us to put controls and measures in place to avoid recurrence on future projects. 

We always expected to initially see a significant increase in our NCR numbers – this shows that the attitude towards NCRs is changing, and that people now see these as a way to improve our operations. Following the training, we have also seen a greater focus on quality from our project teams and on documenting the evidence we require to support the Building Safety Act and the ‘Golden Thread of information’ across our projects.

Find out more about GIRI training or view our other training case studies.