Design Quality Assurance for the Charleston Tactical Aircrew Combat Training System

Design Quality Assurance (DQA) is playing an ever increasing role in major engineering projects. The U.S. government now requires that formal design quality control procedures be implemented by design engineers on all projects, and some federal agencies are supplementing this requirement with independent DQA review programs. This paper discusses the measures that the Chesapeake Division of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command employed to assure the quality of design of the offshore structures that are scheduled to be installed in the Navy's air combat training range off Charleston, South Carolina in the summer of 1986. A third-party DQA team was retained specifically to provide specialized technical support and engineering services to the government, and to check, review and evaluate the designs and analyses prepared by the engineering design contractor under a separate contract. The DQA review not only helped to ensure a very high standard of engineering design; it also had the effect of providing a cohesiveness to the project that benefited all parties involved.