Continuous Quality Improvement and Excellence

At Gannett Fleming, “Quality” is the ability to meet our clients’ requirements and achieve their critical objectives. Our commitment to continuous quality improvement is the cornerstone of our quality program and how we harness employee talents to identify innovative solutions and greater efficiencies.

Our quality management system guides us toward providing responsive, technically sound services that consistently meet our clients’ needs. Client feedback and input gained from formal surveys conducted on the thousands of projects Gannett Fleming completes annually are used to continually improve our processes.

Our Quality Management System (QMS) defines the processes we use to execute every project across the firm, regardless of scope or scale. We follow these processes from project development through project closeout and every step in between to deliver successful projects for our clients.

But we don’t stop there.

Gannett Fleming is committed to quality in all of our services through application of an effective and robust Quality Management System (QMS), certified under the ISO 9001:2015 Standard, that maintains a culture of consistency in work products, continual improvement of our processes, and innovation in our technical solutions. Responsibility for meeting these principles is held at the highest level within the organization to ensure that we achieve the objectives of our projects while bringing high value to our clients.

Professional services that “meet the requirements of clients…” is embedded into Gannett Fleming’s Quality Policy, and our QMS is how we adhere to this policy and its supporting objectives. Doing so prescribes that the organization:

• Instills the value that every employee is responsible for quality.
• Promotes a continual improvement and Plan-Do-Check-Act mentality.
• Subscribes to annual internal and independent external surveillance auditing.
• Ensures that quality is integral with our workflows, not “bolted on” afterward.

At the project level, QMS provisions are incorporated into activities throughout the lifecycle of the assignment beginning with a proposal stage evaluation to confirm sufficient resources, qualifications, and understanding of scope for successful delivery. Prior to initiating work, a thorough, documented project plan is developed describing how both quality and risk are to be managed based on scale and complexity of the job. During project execution, technical deliverables undergo multiple layers of formal Quality Control/Quality Assurance (QC/QA) verification performed by independent, qualified reviewers. At completion, the QMS requirements extend through project closeout, including a lessons learned analysis focused on identifying opportunities for improvement in the processes used and best practices applied.

Our employees are our greatest resource, and we value their opinions and advice.

We tie one of our quality objectives directly to the responses we receive from annual employee surveys, in which we query employees about their perception of the firm’s commitment to quality improvement and customer service. The survey results provide both a score as well as feedback about how we might improve our QMS. These employee insights, and other internal sources, lead to opportunities each year to review and improve our QMS.

Our QMS must have full employee engagement for it to be effective. This begins with quality training on QMS procedures, both for new employees at onboarding as well as required annual training.

Employees foster QC/QA awareness and QC/QA practices from the inception of a project through its completion. Additional training is provided through our Project Management Academy, and online courses are available 24/7 via our Learning Network.

Consistent with our quality policy, our employees take ownership of continuous quality improvement by refining our processes and asking themselves what they can do to contribute to our quality objectives and mission: amaze our clients with our quality, innovation, and responsiveness.