Design Clause Exclusion: Civil Engg Services (maintenance,construction & building)

Good day guys

My company scope is "The provision of civil engineering services(maintenance,construction and building". I would like to ask anyone with knowledge or in the same field of work if they have included design or have it as an exclusion.

We only work with the government so we get drawings from them and we have nothing to do with design,so i think but most state things that one has never thought was part of design but it is, so i do not want to miss anything that is in the dark or unclear.

Thank you

 

Hello Pearl, and welcome to the Quality Forum.

Your company's scope is a giveaway. Engineering services are "design".

Maintenance, construction and building require quite a bit of engineering (read "design"), even when your client provides drawings. You must ensure that such work is done with quality, thus it should be included in your QMS's scope.

 

You are right in that design is not equal to engineering. However, engineering does usually imply some creative work, or work that requires careful application of scientific or mathematical principles. Such work needs to be part of a company's QMS in general, and falls under section 8.3 as either design or development.

From the little info that we have, this would be true for the OP's company. Construction procedures are seldom spelled out in full in a project's drawings. So coming up with such procedures is square inside the definition of design and development in the standard's section 8.3.1.

Perhaps train operators do perform "engineering" without design or development. I doubt many others do so, most especially Civil Engineers. Plus, most states regulate the use of the word "engineering" so that it is not used in any public offer for services, or performance of services, that are not involving either "design" or "development" per the definition of section 8.3.1.

 

Hi Pancho

I worked in an Engineering company and included design (7.3, 9001 2008) in the scope.
But we indeed developed design, because we complied with client needs, they gave us just specifications
of an industrial plant, and from here, we had to create drawings details, make a lot of calculations with design software (Autocad, Ansys, Aveva) and passing all thru checking, approval, verifications and validations.
But in the case of Pearl, they receive drawings (maybe very detailed drawings), so they build based on the drawings, maybe if they face some problems in construction, I think they do just minor modifications, bot not necessarily develop designs.Maybe they only supervise the construction in the field.

Please explain this point, you have a lot of experience in this field.

That is my opinion,

Thanks

 

Semantics. Construction work is seldom if ever specified to the detail necessary for subsequent provision. It'd be very risky to exclude design from the scope of a qms for a company that does such work, most especially if you're calling your scope "engineering services". (Btw, in most states you need a PE on staff to publicize that company scope.)

So even if you would exclude design because of an arbitrarily narrow definition of it, engineering services beg for the controls required in 8.3.2 through 8.3.6.

I do see that my assumption that engineering implies design is not as general as I thought. Maybe the next version of the standard should call section 8.3 "Design, engineering and development"?

 

Good day all;
I'd like to weigh in supporting Andy Nichols' position on this. Engineering activities either in name or practice do not equate to product design.

There are different opinions in regards to the demarcation between design and not design. A common opinion is based on whether or not the "organization" can change the design of the product or if they are limited to simply recommend/request change to the product design from the "customer" (product designer). If the "organization" is not authorized to alter the drawing and/or the product from the drawing, then that particular camp would have the opinion that the "organization" is not performing design. I agree with that particular opinion.

Good conversation.

 

I've been in a construction company before and we mentioned this in our scope:

"ABC’s Quality Management System satisfies the full range of requirements specified by ISO 9001:2008 standard excluding the requirements within Clause 7.3 Design and Development.
Our customers engage third party architectural and building designers where the construction design outputs are endorsed to ABC’s project planners. Our customers maintain the responsibility for the construction specifications. Thus, ABC considers the design specifications as customer supplied products and therefore controls this according to ISO 9001 clause 7.5.4 Customer Property".

Our claim of exclusion was approved by our CB.

IMHO, if a construction company will need to translate general requirements into more detailed specifications for the building to be constructed - then this company should satisfy the requirements on design and development.

ISO 9000:2015 vocabulary defines "design and development" as "set of processes that transform requirements for an object into more detailed requirements for that object".