Comprehensive, Constructive, and Informative
Comprehensive, Constructive, and Informative
Reviews of ‘Digital Quality Management in Construction’, by Paul Marsden; and ‘Offsite Production and Manufacturing for Innovative Construction’, by Jack S. Goulding and Farzad Pour Rahimian
Written by Jenna Collignon, Editor, Matrix Group Publishing
Are you in the construction industry? Are you looking for excellent resources to expand your knowledge in Digital Quality Management and the Offside Manufacturing in the construction industry? These two books, published by Routledge, are comprehensive tomes on these topics, branching from the history of construction to the newest technology being introduced in the industry today.
Digital Quality Management in Construction
Written by Paul Marsden
In the construction industry, there is very little room to talk about ‘new’ things that haven’t already been talked about. This book, however, takes the well-discussed topic of Building Information Modelling and Digital Quality Management and hands it to readers as a ‘how-to’ manual, acting as a road map to the ins and outs of implementing these tools to your own company and methods. It’s a fresh look at this topic and is essential reading for quality and project managers, as well as any professionals in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry.
The book begins with the history of construction quality, beginning with the Palaeolithic era before going through the Middle Ages, the Industrial Revolution, and the beginning of quality and lean construction, and then ending with the modern construction era that we are currently in. From here, Marsden delves into various innovations in this field that are currently being implemented, such as modern quality management, quality information model, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and several others.
Throughout each section of the book, Marsden has incredibly close attention to detail, especially in the historical parts. He moves through textual sources from classical times, including historians like Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, and harks back to religious texts, too; Marsden essentially makes use of any ancient texts that discuss building and construction from a time that historical documents were wrapped in religion and war.
Marsden wraps up the book including appendices and further readings for the benefit of the reader if they wish to delve further into a specific topic explored in the text. As a smaller text, this book is jam-packed with relevant information and is an incredible tool to have.
Offsite Production and Manufacturing for Innovative Construction: People, Process, & Technology
Written by Jack S. Goulding and Farzad Pour Rahimian
Within the construction industry, the offsite and modular market is constantly growing and evolving. As such, this book is a compilation of present-day developments and research. Each essay is written by a different expert and is incredibly well done; Goulding and Rahimian have sourced these from around the world, constructing a web of different research and advancements that stretches the globe.
Each essayistic chapter covers topics such as the driving forces of offsite construction, the challenges and opportunities of offsite manufacturing around the globe, industrialized house building, and many others. Goulding and Rahimian open up the book with a table of contents, followed by a list of the writers and contributors of the book, and then a chapter summary; these are incredibly handy if you wish to explore a specific topic, or are searching for a specific angle and wish to find it quickly.
This book is an incredibly comprehensive and information-heavy book that is also a great tool to have to keep on top of recent advancements in the field of offsite production and manufacturing.
Final thoughts
Overall, these two books, Digital Quality Management in Construction by Paul Marsden and Offsite Production and Manufacturing for Innovative Construction by Jack S. Goulding and Farzad Pour Rahimian, are both fantastic information hubs that those in the construction industry should have in their arsenal. As recent publications, they explore the most recent findings in each of their fields, and ventures into the possible upcoming technologies and advancements as well.
I highly recommend you check out either of these books if they sound like something you would find helpful and informative.
About the Authors
Paul Marsden
Paul Marsden is a Chartered Quality Professional with the Chartered Quality Institute, who has nearly thirty years’ experience of quality management in the construction, telecommunications, banking, security, aerospace, energy and rail fields. He specialises in quality management capability, sustainability, continual improvement, customer satisfaction, lean programmes, auditing and creating business intelligence platforms to collate and report performance data and information. Paul has had a diverse career, including being a Member of Parliament, Head of Quality at Horizon Nuclear Power, Head of Quality at Horizon Nuclear Power and Interim Secretary-General of a European construction trade association.
Jack Goulding
Jack S. Goulding is Professor of Construction Project Management at the University of Wolverhampton (UK) and Joint Coordinator of CIB W121: Offsite Construction. He works closely with industry developing new business models, strategies and change programmes, including technology transfer, organisational learning and offsite manufacturing.
Farzad Pour Rahimian
Farzad Pour Rahimian is an Associate Professor at Northumbria University (UK), with expertise in the mainstream areas of: BIM, IT Integrated Design and Construction, Virtual-Reality, Automation, Simulation and Optimisation. He has led various publicly funded research projects, supervised numerous industry-based PhD students and published more than 120 research outputs.