Carriers today are faced with rising “Maintenance” costs for sites at a time when capital expenditures (CapEx), are crucial and money for maintenance is in short supply. It may surprise some to learn that much of today’s maintenance required at sites is not maintenance at all. It’s really Quality Assurance/Quality Control (QA/QC) work that should have been taken care of during the construction and acceptance phase of the project; work that has not been right from the beginning.

Maintenance may be defined as: “The work of keeping something in proper condition; upkeep.” Quality control may be defined as: “The assessment of product compliance with stated requirements.”

Is this simply a matter of semantics then? Not really. A carrier’s maintenance budget is designed for work intended to keep a tower or site in proper condition. If the site has never been in the proper condition, then maintenance dollars are being spent on items that are really the contractor’s responsibility to repair. An assessment of the product compliance, (the newly constructed site), with stated requirements is a crucial tool in reducing today’s maintenance budgets and for holding contractor’s accountable.

In many situations today, QA/QC is left to “Trusted” contractors who may or may not know what a good job looks like. The client does not inspect the work that was done and there is no real accountability. Even well meaning contractors can miss what a good job looks like in a given situation. This poor quality can show up in increased “Maintenance” budgets later on tapping precious CapEx budgets.

In other situations those touted to be experts inspect completed sites for the purpose of QA/QC and end up missing glaring deficiencies. In one recent example, we were asked to inspect a carrier’s tower. During the inspection, we uncovered $45,000.00 in necessary repairs attributable to Quality Control problems including an upside down leg on the tower. The tower had been inspected and signed off by a “Reputable” engineering firm that simply didn’t know what a good job looked like. Fortunately for the carrier, the work was caught soon enough that the contractor could still be held accountable for the repairs.

What can we learn then from this discussion? We have been lied to; practice does not make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Quality Assurance/Quality Control is a critical aspect of reducing maintenance budgets and holding contractors accountable. In all cases, installers and QA/QC personnel must know what a good job looks like to maximize CapEx dollars.

Whether maintenance work or QA/QC, Wireless legacy knows what a good job looks like. We’ve been at the task of studying, developing, training and implementing the industry’s best practices since 1956. We perform most tower and site related maintenance and repairs. We also specialize in finding and defining deficiencies at the sites with our thorough inspection capabilities. (Click on Inspections in the Services section of the site to learn more)