“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.” –John Ruskin
“We worked on that one.” For those of us involved in architecture, engineering, and construction, it’s an amazing feeling to point out a great building we helped to create. Our families and friends all get to hear about the challenges we were able to overcome to build something unique, useful, beautiful, or just plain good.
In contrast, pointing out a project that went poorly is emotionally painful: nobody wants to highlight their team’s poor workmanship. We instinctively understand the value of quality.
Construction and the processes that lead up to it or support it are about bending pieces of the world to a desired shape. Doing it well is incredibly difficult, but quality doesn’t have to remain out of reach. Here are 5 simple steps you can take to elevate the quality of your work this year.
1. Build Your Organizational Ethos From the Ground Up
“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” –John Dryden
Building great things means building Quality Culture, a collective agreement that doing things well is worth the effort. This means we have to repeatedly make this agreement with each other publicly—at organizational and team levels—but we also have to hold ourselves to that same standard, no matter what we’re working on.
Take the extra minute to proofread an email. Make sure that new contract is buttoned up. You’re building a habit of quality that will end up shaping everything you do. Get quality reps in wherever possible, and soon you’ll find quality has become less of an effort and more of a reflex. A team that does quality work reflexively is unbeatable.
2. Take Time for SOPs
Construction is full of rich oral traditions. We use weird terms—shim, firring, sparky, rock—and the only way to really get initiated into the vocabulary is by hanging around other professionals long enough to pick it up organically.
There’s certainly a place for oral tradition, but when it comes to quality, we can’t afford to wait for organic adoption. Getting new (and even older) team members on the same page means taking the time to record The Right Way. Spell out processes. Map out workflows. Explain how but also why.
A large number of our clients are developers in the multifamily space. Several of them have gone so far as to commission us to provide them with a set of standard waterproofing details. They’ve mandated the use of these details in every drawing set for a period of years, giving their teams SOPs with clear guidance on how to attack the trickier areas of a waterproofing project and consistent improvements in quality.
3. Make Processes Repeatable
In the same vein, building a culture of quality requires leaders who can aggressively and persistently find ways to make it simple for their teams to easily do things The Right Way.
- Version Control: Eliminate outdated processes, methods, and documentation.
- Teaching Methods: If your team learns better through experiential education, adopt that style. The classroom isn’t always the answer.
- Recognition: Leaders must find the best in their people and celebrate it daily.
As consultants who perform building enclosure quality assurance site visits, we’ve seen this method work on our clients’ jobsites through documentation of their team’s successes. We want our reports to show when a team has skillfully performed integration of weather barrier and flashings around a tricky area like an HVAC penetration or a balcony ledger (pictured). Highlighting that success makes it rewarding and therefore easier for that team to do it The Right Way again and again.
4. Prioritize Humility Over Reputation
It’s ok to be wrong. In fact, it’s pretty unavoidable. What matters isn’t the fact that we sometimes get things wrong, but how we face that moment. Caught early enough, being wrong isn’t the disaster it may feel like. In fact, it’s actually a great opportunity to build Quality Culture.
Obviously, it’s important to capitalize on this opportunity by learning from it. But go a step further: let your team see you be wrong and recover from it. By doing this, you make it “safe” to bring mistakes to the attention of other team members before they cause catastrophic damage.
5. Ask Experts
Building Quality Culture sometimes means asking for help or guidance from outside sources who specialize in a particular set of problems. Experts exist because they are experts; there is no purpose of an expert without an issue to provide insight on.
As building enclosure consultants, the reason for our existence is to help our clients find common-sense solutions to problems with the systems that keep the outside out and the inside in.
Our design peer reviews bring a specialized set of design skills and priorities to the design process. Our quality assurance site visits provide keen eyes and a supportive voice that helps construction teams stay on track through on-site challenges. And our on-site testing services verify the quality of construction and installation processes.
Other consultants deal with specialty areas like structural, environmental, electrical, and even acoustics. There is a wealth of knowledge out there for leaders who are willing to ask.
2026 can be the year that your team’s quality goes from good to great. Implementing these five steps will put you well on your way to making that a reality.
About BECI
BECI provides expert building envelope consulting services for new and existing construction. With a focus on sensible spending, stakeholder collaboration, and long-term building resilience, BECI helps clients minimize risk and extend the life of their assets.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and connect with our experts.
