At JE Dunn, Quality isn’t simply about executing the job as designed; it involves proactive planning, practice, and review to ensure the best results on each project. In essence, the team is making their list and checking it twice before breaking ground on a project.
Critical thinking is key at multiple checkpoints throughout a project. This became especially apparent during the mid-1960s during the construction of the Vista Del Rio apartments, now named The View.
Superintendent Bill Jones, structural engineer Bob Campbell, and Bill Dunn Sr. reviewed plans for the senior living project after Jones suspected something was off. When looking back over the original documents, the team noticed multiple problems with the wall installation and steel support for the building in the first structural engineer’s design. Their reevaluation of the project plans would cement the practice of conducting “peer reviews.” While peer reviews were uncommon at the time, without the additional evaluation by JE Dunn employees, the building wouldn’t have stood the test of time as it has today.
Since then, our experts have refined the peer review process into the ‘Focus 4 Quality’ points that all teams follow today: constructability and third-party peer reviews, pre-install meetings, mockups, and first work-in-place inspections. Incorporating these processes into the pre-project timeline ensures architects are satisfied with the final aesthetic and everyone assigned to the project is aligned on the schedule, the scope of work, and the plans to inspect at multiple stages in the project.
Ensuring quality is everyone’s responsibility at JE Dunn. The Quality department epitomizes “doing the right thing” – the theme for the 2024 National Quality Week.
What started out as a group of two has now expanded to 55 employees, including four regional directors, a healthcare coordinator, architects, engineers, and Advanced Facilities Group leaders. As the company grows, the key to maintaining regional consistency is balanced by allowing job autonomy. According to National Quality Director Jason Wright, the best way the team is evolving is being proactive rather than reactive.
“Not everything we build will be the same. If we blend consistency and autonomy, you get the best results by communicating and keeping track of what we can do better in the future,” Wright said.
National company initiatives such as Quality Week, monthly Quality Bulletin videos, all-company Quality University panels and access to numerous preconstruction planning documents enable everyone to have an aligned vision for best quality assurance practices.
Wright’s hope for the future is to keep raising the bar for what the quality team can do, and he aspires to “continue providing service to company, while raising people’s awareness of the quality work happening.”