Material quality assurance risk assessment.

Final report.PDFTech ReportMD-13-SP909B4KSP909B4KQuality assuranceQuality controlRisk analysisContractorsConstruction projectsMarylandMaryland. State Highway Administration. Office of Policy & ResearchGoulias, DimitriosKarimi, SahandUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)NTL-SAFETY AND SECURITY-SAFETY AND SECURITYNTL-HIGHWAY/ROAD TRANSPORTATION-Construction and MaintenanceUS Transportation CollectionOver the past two decades the role of SHA has shifted from quality control (QC) of materials andplacement techniques to quality assurance (QA) and acceptance. The role of the Office of MaterialsTechnology (OMT) has been shifting towards assurance of material quality and oversight of contractorquality control operations.Since SHA deals with a variety of materials and construction processes there is a wide spectrum ofspecifications and acceptance requirements. It was the objective of this study to identify typical materialQC/QA procedures and a) examine their conformance in relation to the federal requirements for definingQA plans, Independent Assurance (IA) procedures, and material certification; b) identify potentialimprovements to existing SHA QA plans, when necessary; c) assess product variability based onproduction QC data, when available; and iv) evaluate risks related to material acceptance data whenapplicable (i.e., when acceptance data are available). To address these objectives the research team hadseveral meetings with SHA engineers from the (1) Soils and Aggregates Division, (2) Concrete TechnologyDivision, and (3) Structural Materials and Coatings Division in order to identify the type of materials toinclude in the study, and fine tune the specific steps of the research approach to follow