One of the most famous cars in the movies is the DeLorean from the Back to the Future series. The car was named after its creator, John DeLorean. Before starting his own automobile manufacturing business, John worked for the Pontiac Division of General Motors. He wrote of efforts he made to improve the quality of cars before they left the plant, sending men to work on defects before the cars were transported to the dealerships. GM brass didn't like what he was doing, and had him stop it. Cost too much. The cars then went to the dealerships as good or as bad as the workmen of that day determined - and GM has paid an enormous price in its reputation for the quality of its vehicles.
As the Japanese looked at improving their automotive products they used the teachings of W. Edward Deming. His approach has been summarized as follows:
"Dr. W. Edwards Deming taught that by adopting appropriate principles of management, organizations can increase quality and simultaneously reduce costs (by reducing waste, rework, staff attrition and litigation while increasing customer loyalty). The key is to practice continual improvement and think of manufacturing as a system, not as bits and pieces." ( Dr. Deming's Management Training).
That's all nice and good for manufacturing, you may be thinking, but architectural projects are projects, not manufactured items. We usually do one, once - and never again. But look again at that description, for it includes practice continual improvement and think of manufacturing as a system.
One advantage of working with a number of firm Principals is seeing how people react to problems. Many pay lip service to the idea of continual improvement (and hey, don't we have mandatory continuing education?), but fall far short in practice. What are you improving? Start by finding out what needs to be improved - look at your change orders, RFI's, E&O charges - is there anything that keeps coming up, such as non-ADA compliant design?
Think of project management as a system. Your "manufactured" product are your instruments of service. Your "machinery" is your staff - your knowledge workers - on whose knowledge you depend to get the work right the first and only time. If the same errors keep occuring, maybe you have the wrong people doing the work, or they need additional education.
If you are relying on a checklist to weed out errors in a set of drawings, you are beginning with a set of drawings filled with errors. Your approach is really no different than trying to patch over some defects in a vehicle before it gets shipped out. Even if you catch all the defects, you are still manufacturing a defective product and gambling that one never gets out. Much better to set up a system that makes it harder for errors to get on the drawings.
Most business books focus on the creation of goods, not services. David Maister has written a number of books that focus on professional service firms, such as those run by attorneys, engineers, and architects. I've found his observations on HR issues extremely helpful. The right mix of staff will help keep QA/QC at a high level.