Quality as Meeting All Requirements

The requirements of a potential client, owner, or customer may lie outside what you are willing or able to do. In such situations, personal and corporate ethical standards, possibly augmented with liability exposure concerns, may require that you terminate the relationship. Chapter 12 offers engineering students and practitioners an in-depth discussion of ethics with emphasis on application. 

As an aside, note the title of Crosby s book. What does he mean by free He explains free this way Quality is free. It s not a gift, but it is free. What costs are the unquality things—all the aetions that involve not doing jobs right the first time.  

The third leg is the standard of care. What does that mean J. R. Hawkins (2005) offers this short definition The level of competence practitioners in their field customarily expect given the circumstances. Standard of care may also be referred to as duty of care (Bachner 2007). Regardless of what you decide to use, standard of care or duty of care, please recognize that you are not expected to be perfect. However, you are expected to do your work as well as others doing similar work under the same circumstances. Chapter 11 includes additional discussion of standard of care. 

For another example, consider a hypothetical situation. You design the outlet of a stormwater detention basin for a municipality and do not include a safety or debris grate. During a storm, a child is attracted to and goes into the rising water, is carried 

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If you do not have a common quality definition, you invite internally-driven scope creep. For example, assume you as project manager view quality as meeting all requirements, as recommended in the next chapter. You have determined the tasks, deliverables, and schedule needed to meet those requirements have estimated the cost and have entered into a mutually-acceptable agreement with the client, owner, or customer. You are embarking on a potentially successful project—for your organization and for the organization you are serving. 

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