Quality Management Systems Reduce Contractor Costs

Nov. 16, 2012 -- Cory Allen, Director of Quality Systems at Vulcan Painters, spoke to the Birmingham Chapter of the NACE on November 16. Allen discussed painting practices and how quality management is involved in Vulcan's day to day operations.

Vulcan Painters is an ISO 9001 certified company, and also holds six certifications from SSPC: the Society for Protective Coatings' Painting Contractor Certification Program. Vulcan was the first painting contractor to achieve the SSPC Quality Systems (QS1) Certification.

With quality management, Vulcan's business model is planning and prevention rather than reliance exclusively on quality control to catch mistakes after the coating is applied, Allen said. "It is more efficient and less costly to train people and improve the skills of painters and project managers to apply coatings correctly, than to rely on quality control inspectors trying to identify nonconformities at the end of a job," Allen said.

Allen discussed equipment used in quality control work, and issues in the industry as a whole, including what he calls an overbalance of certified inspectors, who outnumber painting contractors 15 to one.

"That's why there is a need for certified painting contractors, as identified by the SSPC Painting Contractor Certification Program, because they do have skills in quality management to coordinate projects successfully and produce customers work on time," Allen said.

Cory Allen has earned the American Society for Quality certified manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence designation. He is also certified as a Protective Coatings Specialist by SSPC-The Society for Protective Coatings. He has an M.S. degree from the Department of Polymer Science and High Performance Materials at the University of Southern Mississippi, and holds numerous certifications from NACE.