Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control in Project Execution

Distinguishes between quality assurance (process-oriented, proactive) and quality control (product-oriented, reactive) within architectural project execution, covering how each function reduces risk, who performs each role, and how QA/QC programs integrate across design and construction phases.

ARE · Project Management

Overview

Quality assurance and quality control sound interchangeable. They're not. Mixing them up on the ARE will cost you points, and mixing them up in practice will cost your firm real money.

Quality assurance (QA) is about process. It asks: "Are we following the right procedures to produce good work?" QA is proactive. It happens before and during production, setting up systems, checklists, training, and audits so that errors are prevented rather than caught after the fact.

Quality control (QC) is about product. It asks: "Does this specific deliverable meet the standard?" QC is reactive. It inspects, tests, and reviews the work output to find defects and non-conformances.

Here's the practical split: a firm's office-wide standard for how drawings get checked before they leave the office is QA. The senior architect redlining a set of construction documents to catch coordination errors is QC. Both are necessary. Neither replaces the other.

On the PjM exam, you'll need to evaluate which approach applies in a given scenario, determine who holds responsibility for each function, and judge whether a firm's quality program has gaps. The distinction matters because QA failures are systemic (broken processes produce repeated errors), while QC failures are isolated (a missed detail on one drawing). Fixing one without the other leaves the project exposed.

Essential

The terms QA and QC get thrown around as a single phrase so often that many architects treat them as one concept. On the PjM exam, that confusion will burn you. Each serves a distinct purpose, involves different activities, and belongs at different points in a project's lifecycle. ## Defining the Two Functions Quality Control focuses on fulfilling quality requirements. It's the inspection side: checking drawings, reviewing submittals, testing materials, running clash detection, comparing work against specifications. QC catches problems that already exist in a deliverable. Quality Assurance focuses on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled. It's the systems side: writing procedures, scheduling reviews, training staff, auditing whether teams actually follow the procedures. QA prevents problems from occurring in the first place by making the production process reliable. The GSA's P-120 cost and schedule management policy draws this line clearly. Quality management is the overarching system.

Professional

Scenario 1: The Skipped Review Milestone Consider a mid-size architecture firm working on a $45 million healthcare renovation. The project schedule is aggressive, and the design development deadline falls during a holiday period when senior staff are unavailable. The project manager decides to skip the DD-phase peer review and push straight into construction documents, planning to "catch up" with a more thorough review at 50% CDs. This is a QA failure, not a QC failure. The firm's quality management plan called for a review at DD completion. Bypassing that milestone means the process designed to catch coordination issues between disciplines never ran. When the 50% CD review finally happens, reviewers find that the mechanical engineer's ductwork routing conflicts with structural framing in twelve locations, and the plumbing riser diagram doesn't account for a relocated nurse station decided during DD. The fix took three weeks of redesign.

TLDR

QA = process. Sets up systems, procedures, checklists, and training to prevent defects before they happen. Proactive.
QC = product. Inspects, tests, and reviews specific deliverables to catch defects that exist. Reactive.
Both live inside a quality management plan (QMP) that also includes continuous process improvement.
Contractor runs QC on their own work. Owner's representative runs QA to verify the contractor's QC works. Architect reviews for design intent, not as the contractor's inspector.
Constructability reviews (best at 60% design) are a QA activity that performs a QC function.
Post-construction reviews feed lessons back into the QA system to prevent repeat errors.
QC failure = one bad deliverable. QA failure = a broken process producing repeated errors across projects.
A recurring QC finding should trigger a QA-level fix: update the checklist, retrain staff, revise the procedure.
The cost of catching errors rises dramatically from design phase to construction phase to post-occupancy.

ELI5

Think about writing a big school report. Before you start writing, your teacher gives you rules: use spell check, have someone else read your draft, turn in an outline first. Those rules exist so your report comes out good. That's quality assurance. It's the system of rules and habits that make good work more likely. After you finish writing, your friend reads through your report and circles the spelling mistakes, points out where a paragraph doesn't make sense, and checks that your sources are cited correctly. That's quality control. It's someone checking the actual thing you made. Both matter. If you only have QC (your friend checking), you'll catch some mistakes, but you'll keep making the same types of errors over and over. If you only have QA (the rules), you'll have great procedures on paper, but nobody's actually verifying that your specific report is error-free.

AREProject Management

Quality Assurance vs. Quality Control in Project Execution

2 min read213 words

QA vs. QC: Two Sides of the Same Quality Coin

Quality assurance and quality control sound interchangeable. They're not. Mixing them up on the ARE will cost you points, and mixing them up in practice will cost your firm real money.

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