Aconex and Procore are sophisticated project management software that predominantly help coordinate documents, drawings, and communications in a more efficient manner between teams. Think, thousands of revisions to drawings throughout a project, time-sensitive reviews of progress claims and so on.
These enterprise solutions offer a platform primarily designed for head contractors. Within this platform they have a growing number of modules or integrations that cater to specific tasks or functionalities.
Both Aconex & Procore have modules in the Quality space, however it is important to note that these are largely geared towards Quality Control rather than Quality Assurance, which are fundamentally different.
- Quality Control (QC) typically consists of head contractors identifying defects in work that trade contractors have completed. If defects are found, a remedial process is required for the trades to go back and fix them, and then for head contractors to review them. This process involves multiple people at different levels of the build and so requires additional context.
- Quality Assurance (QA) typically consists of subcontractors’ site supervisors checking the work of their own team before the work is considered completed and handed over to the head contractor. Any issues discovered are resolved from within before becoming defects. It is associated with self-performing subcontractors that do not rely on head contractors to do the checking work for them.
To summarise: QC is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff after the accident, QA is the fence at the top. QC is more expensive, time-consuming and confrontational. It makes sense for head contractors to invest in a robust QA process and drive engagement, but ultimately it is up to the subcontractors to run it.
So while Aconex Field is a great tool for rectifying volumes of defects in bulk, it may not be ideally suited to subcontractors performing their own QA at scale. Good QA requires a unique workflow that allows for checking the specific criteria for a specific task in a specific area before the work is done, hundreds if not thousands of times over throughout the time active on site. If it’s not set up properly, it’s going to be as laborious as it sounds.
CONQA is a solution that specialises in QA for subcontractors, designed to meet the needs of the site teams first.
In most cases, contractors should have both a QC tool and a QA tool, and these can work alongside each other. This is why we work with a wide number of contractors who use both Aconex Field or Procore, and CONQA. The outputs may look and work in a similar way, but the user experience is very different.
If you’d like to learn more about how our clients use these systems together, please get in touch here
