Novel Developments in the Quality Assurance of Road Construction Projects

Quality assurance (QA) in its traditional meaning is based on very detailed, in general prescriptive design and construction standards, on standardi-zed conformity criteria for all construction mate-rials and on generally accepted rules for good cons-truction practice. This basis allowed to limit QAon control tests and acceptance decisions for in-termediate or final construction stages. The suc-cess of this system results from a severe limitationof possible design and construction alternativesand from corresponding control tests.New developments and experiences gained in QAof complex production techniques give rise to re-consider the traditional way of QA in road cons-truction. This constribution presents some ideasconcerning the application of advanced QA-sys-terns in road construction projects. These QA-systems distinguished from traditional QA-proce-dures by a systematic quality planning and corres-ponding control to be carried out by the materialproducer and building contractor during all pro-duction and construction phases. Prerequisite forsuch a QA-system isaswella closed link QA-chaincovering the total design and construction processas the definition of unequivocal quality require-ments and corresponding conformity criteria.