Quality assurance in design organisations: a case study in China

Purpose – This paper aims to unveil the conditions of implementation of ISO 9001 standard in design organisations, identify the critical factors affecting design quality, and explore the main threats to impair sustainability of design organisations in Chinese economy system transition. Design/methodology/approach – Using a structured questionnaire survey, a structured questionnaire was sent to the senior management representatives of the 100 design organisations ISO 9001‐certified in building and civil engineering. The relative importance index (RII) was employed to identify the factors affecting design quality and the major threats to sustainable development of design organisations. Findings – The result shows that the major motivation for implementing ISO 9001 was to seek to improve management and organisational culture. The benefits resulted from the implementation of the standards were: standardisation for internal management for internal operations; increase confidence from clients for market effects, and reduce design deviations for effectiveness improvement. Moreover, the critical factors affecting design quality were identified including “commitment to quality of leader of project design team”, “technical skills of leader of project design team”, “commitment to quality of the designer”, “organising skills of leader of project design team”, “experience of leader of project design team”, and “design organisation's supervision and control on quality”. An additional finding shows that the top threat to impair sustainability of design organisations is “immature design market” in China. Practical implications – Proposes some useful suggestions for the design organisations that are implementing (or will implement) ISO 9001 standards. Originality/value – The study could help the design organisations to overcome the challenges facing them towards the adoption of the quality scheme and achieve continual improvement.