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The Power of the Checklist

11-14 minutes

Do you want to know what makes me cringe? Usually when I walk into a concrete producers
facility I ask, Who is in charge of quality control? Sometime I get a glib answer, Everyone is
in charge of quality control. When I hear this I want to grab the person Im talking to and shake
some sense into them, because their answer means that there is no one in charge of quality
control. Im sure you have heard the story of Everybody, Somebody, Nobody and Anybody, but
it is a good story so I will repeat it.

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There
was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody
could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was
Everybodys job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody
wouldnt do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody
could have.

My father was fond of saying, The only person who can control the quality of the work is the
person doing the work. However, there is a big difference between being in charge of the
quality of your own work and being in charge of the result of everybodys work. The person in
charge of quality control should be a single individual who is not only responsible for the quality
of the finished product, but also has the authority to make changes to insure that the finished
product meets its requirements.

Of course, there are different levels of quality control. The QC manager is usually in charge of
the concrete product itself, but the QC manager doesnt control the activities of the Sales and
Operations departments. A number of years ago Concrete Construction or The Concrete
Producer published an article on the Top 10 Complaints about Ready Mixed Concrete. I cant
find the article, but as I recall most of the problems didnt relate to the concrete but to
operational aspects, like on-time delivery with proper spacing of trucks. Even operational issues
relate to the quality of the delivered concrete.

While some operational aspects can be measured and have quality criteria applied to them, a lot
of other things affect quality but cant really be measured. It has often been said that the front-
end-loader operator is the most important person on the yard when it comes to quality. After all,
the loader operator controls the materials that go into the concrete. If (s)he lowers the bucket into
the muck at the bottom of the stockpile, the quality of the concrete will suffer. There are a
number of aspects to the loader operators work that affect the quality of the concrete.
Measuring the unmeasurable

So how does the QC manager monitor the work of others when most aspects of that work cant
be measured? The answer is the lowly checklist. Checklists are everywhere. If you look on the
door of a restroom at McDonalds you will probably find a log sheet showing who from the
restaurant has gone into the restroom each hour to make certain the restroom is clean and
properly supplied. The log sheet is a form of checklist. Sure, it doesnt have every little task on
it, but how much goes into verifying a restroom is clean and stocked? Clean check! Paper
towels check! Toilet paper check! Done and out the door. If later a patron complains, it is
easy to see who the last person was to check out the restroom.

On a more serious note, pilots routinely use checklists to perform a pre-flight check. Nobody
wants to be 5,000 feet in the air and find out that they are running low on fuel. A pre-flight check
can run from 20-25 items for a small plane, to thousands (millions?) of items for a space shuttle.
For a small plane items might include rudder moves freely, ailerons move freely, fuel tank is full,
oil reservoir is full, tires arent flat, and so on. Before you go on a long car trip you are supposed
to do something similar for your car. Tires fully inflated? Windshield washer tank full? Gas tank
full?

There are lots of checklists already in use in the concrete industry. The NRMCA and ASCC have
gotten together and created a Checklist for a Pre-construction Conference.
http://my.nrmca.org/scriptcontent/BeWeb/Orders/ProductDetail.cfm?pc=2PCHCKLIST

The NRMCA also has a Quality Control Checklist.

http://my.nrmca.org/scriptcontent/BeWeb/Orders/ProductDetail.cfm?pc=2PQC123

Many contractors have a pre-placement checklist to verify proper setup of forms and reinforcing
steel and the availability of the proper equipment and manpower before concrete is placed. The
nice thing about checklists is that they can be as simple or as complicated as is necessary, as long
as they verify the status of the important things. Also, checklists can either be formal documents
that need to be filled out, or they can be laminated cards that arent filled out but are used as a
guide for inspection. In the latter case it is recommended that whoever is using the checklist be
required to sign a log sheet attesting that they have perform the checklist as provided. It is
amazing how a simple signature can provide accountability and improve compliance with the
checklist.

After the checklist has been filled out (or attested to) it becomes something that can be quantified
over time. The soft drink machine was restocked at the end of the business day 29 out of 30
days this month. That represents a 97% compliance rating. Notice that we didnt say anything
about whether it was fully stocked, or whether it had the right combination of products. Those
are separate issues. Also, the checklist or log file can be compared with customer complaints.
We had 3 complaints about the soft drink machine being empty, and John was the person in
charge of checking the machine the night before in every case.
Operational QC checklists

Of course this blog is about concrete and not soft drink machines. Where do checklists fit into a
concrete producers operation? The answer is, Almost everywhere. When most people think
about concrete quality control they think about slump tests, air tests and compression testing of
concrete cylinders (or cubes for our friends across the Pond). However, these tests are all after
the fact. They measure the concrete after it is produced. They are not quality control tools, they
are quality verification tools. The only thing they can control is whether the concrete gets used
on the project or not. To really control the quality of the concrete we measure things like
aggregate moisture, batch weights, aggregate gradings, cement cube strengths and so on.

But what about the things we cant measure? What about stockpile contamination? What about
leaking water valves that allow water to be mixed into the concrete without being measured?
What about an oil or grease leak that allows contaminants to drop into the concrete, destroying
air entrainment? These are things that are never measured, but if we do a simple inspection they
can be identified and corrected. The trouble is, Everybody expects Somebody to do it, but
Nobody does it. If people took a few minutes out of each day to look around their work area to
confirm the proper conditions exist, a lot of quality problems in the concrete could be avoided.

Who can benefit from checklists?

Front end loader operators one for equipment and one for the yard condition
Batch plant operators Is the batch plant showing signs of wear?
QC technicians Is the equipment clean and operational? Are consumable supplies
needed?
Truck drivers Is the truck clean, fueled and the oil level checked? How are the tires,
water valve and mixer fins? What is the odometer reading and what are the engine hours?

Most people can benefit from a checklist. Even I, sitting at my desk, use a checklist of sorts to
make certain that I dont get distracted from the important things on my schedule.

After I create a checklist what happens? The checklist defines expectations of the person using it.
If I provide a loader operator with a daily checklist that includes inspection of the yard for
aggregate stockpile contamination, then I see stockpile contamination during my own weekly
inspection, the loader operator has no excuse for either not resolving the problem, or at least
reporting it to the correct people (if you have a checklist that needs to be filled out and turned in,
the person receiving the report should be able to correct the problem.) Of course the loader
operator needs to be educated on what is and what isnt stockpile contamination. If there are
multiple instances of a situation not being reported, the loader operator can be re-educated or
reprimanded. In the opposite situation, if the loader operator consistently reports problems in the
yard so that they can be corrected before the concrete is harmed, the operator can be rewarded.

How does all this affect the QC manager? If a problem occurs with the concrete and, because of
the operation checklists, the QC manager feels that operational issues are not causing the
problem, he can turn his attention elsewhere with confidence. Was a low strength cylinder
caused by batching variations, a leaking water valve on the truck, mishandling of the cylinders at
the jobsite, or improper testing at the lab? If the QC manager is knowledgeable about the plants
batching tolerances and knows truck water valves are inspected daily, he can pay more attention
to the jobsite and the lab.

Creating a checklist

How do you go about creating checklist for various operational areas? The first thing to do is to
talk to the people who do the work in their area. Get their recommendations. Next, refer to
technical documents. The American Concrete Institute has ACI 304, Measuring, Mixing,
Transporting and Placing Concrete, which has a lot of great information on material handling
and production. Also, the NRMCA has checklists for batch plant inspection and truck inspection.

In addition, I have just started a survey on the use of checklists at the concrete plant. Please add
your own experience at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QY9T3HD. There is no point in
reinventing the wheel. It has already been invented. I will post a summary of the results in a few
weeks on this blog.

Finally, after the checklist has been created you have to get people to use it. Following are some
tips on implementing checklists:

Make certain the people using the checklists know that using it isnt just busywork.
Results will be checked and verified. People that dont do it or fill it out at random will
be reprimanded. If you can, provide an incentive system for people that use the checklists
properly.
Make certain the people using the checklists understand the items on it and know how to
fill in the checklist properly.
Develop a story or example for why the checklist was necessary, or why it was
successful. We had a load of concrete rejected because it had 3 inch aggregate pieces
when the concrete was supposed to contain just pea gravel. Or We stopped a load of
concrete from being produced when a load of rip-rap was dumped into the pea gravel bin.
Good job, Joe.
Give positive feedback whenever possible. Last year we had the plant conveyor belt
snap 3 times because of wear and tear on the belt. This year, because of our inspection
system, we havent had any belt failures during production.

Do you use checklists to support operational QC? If so, I would love to hear about how it has
worked for you and to see samples of your checklists. Feel free to add comments to this article or
send me an email. Also, remember to respond to my survey at
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QY9T3HD.

Until next time,

Jay Shilstone

About Jay ShilstoneI am a concrete technologist for Command Alkon, Inc. and have been in the concrete industry for over 35 years. For 28 of
those years I have been working on quality control software for the concrete industry. I am a Fellow of the American Concrete Institute and a
member of multiple ACI, ASTM and NRMCA committees. I look forward to talking about concrete mix design and quality control with
everyone.