Issues Related to Use of Contractor Quality Control Data in Acceptance Decision and Payment: Benefits and Pitfalls

Several agencies throughout the United States use contractor data as a means of acceptance. This is a permissible practice as long as certain safeguards are in place and as long as the functions of quality control and quality acceptance remain separate. The benefit of this type of procedure is potential decreases in the personnel and testing facilities required by the state agency. However, this type of approach for acceptance also has inherent risks. In most cases, the changes required to implement a system in which contractor data are used in the acceptance decision are more philosophical than technical. In other words, the amount of testing that the contractor will have to do to meet the requirements of the change will more than likely be about the same as (or only slightly more than) that undertaken in the current specification system. However, even though a state agency may see a drop in the amount of testing required to support acceptance, it will now be faced with the fact that it must trust the contractor’s data for determination of pay factors and, ultimately, acceptance of the work. Thus, when the procedure of contractor testing used for acceptance is fully implemented, there will be two major impacts on a state agency. One is a psychological adjustment for agency personnel to assimilate the fact that contractor test results will be used to establish the pay factor. Discussion is needed to address this adjustment, and the state should plan training sessions to address the reasons for this decision and the importance of the steps that will be taken to implement it. The other impact will be the need to implement and monitor the validation system.