Quality Assurance for Thermal Power Project Construction in India

In contrast to machine‐oriented construction practices in developed countries, construction practices in developing countries are labor oriented. However, labor—especially the unskilled—is local and changes from place to place. Furthermore, there has been a steady migration of skilled workers to the Middle East in the last two decades. All these factors led to difficulties in ensuring quality control in construction projects in developing countries. Recently, in a thermal power project construction, assistance in ensuring quality control was provided by a third party, an educational institution. The quality‐control assurance was mainly for materials and construction in concrete and steel for civil works. The general methodologies adopted by different agencies for ensuring quality control, different measures taken for ensuring quality of materials and construction, experiences gained in ensuring quality control through a third party, and measures adopted to create quality awareness to some extent in unskilled, illiterate labor are described in this paper. As observed, third‐party quality assurance improved the quality of the civil works and prevented wastage of construction materials.