QA/QC plan
A QA/QC plan is the document that says how quality will be verified on a project before a single inspection happens: who checks what, against which standard, and what happens when something does not meet it. Written well, it is short and specific. Written badly, it is boilerplate copied from the last job, which is why so many projects have a QA/QC plan and a quality problem at the same time.
What a QA/QC plan has to define
Roles and authority: who can inspect, who can accept, who can sign off on a deviation, and — critically — who is not allowed to be the one who accepts their own work.
The inspection and test regime, discipline by discipline, tied to the specification sections it satisfies — this is where the plan and the ITP overlap, and on most jobs they should be the same document viewed two ways.
How a non-conformance is raised, investigated and closed: the finding, the root cause, the corrective action, and the evidence that the corrective action actually worked — not just that it was proposed.
How the plan handles the design side, not only the field: testability review before construction starts, discipline sign-off on requirements, and a documented path for a requirement that genuinely cannot be met — an approved deviation with its residual risk written down, not a silent gap.
What to look for in software that runs the plan
- 1Does the tool know what the plan requires before work starts?A QA/QC plan is a set of requirements per asset per phase. Software that only tracks what has been uploaded cannot tell you what the plan still owes.
- 2Is non-conformance a real workflow?NCR, corrective action, closure evidence, a name on the closure — each should be a tracked state with a clock, not a spreadsheet tab someone updates on Fridays.
- 3Does the design-phase QA live in the same record as the field work?If requirement sign-off and testability review happen in a different tool than the field inspections, the story of the project is split across two systems that never reconcile.
- 4Can a deviation be approved on the record, with its risk documented?A shortfall that becomes an email thread instead of a tracked deviation is a gap nobody remembers to close out.
- 5Does the plan hold the same way for everyone, including the QA manager?A QA/QC plan that an administrator can quietly override is a QA/QC plan in name only.
How Veristep does it
Required inspections, tests and documents per machine per phase — from platform defaults or your own templates — so the plan's requirements are visible from day one, not reconstructed at closeout.
An NCR moves to corrective action and closes only with the closure evidence attached and a name on it; a deficiency carries severity, a responsible party and a days-open clock.
Testability checks on requirements, discipline sign-off before construction, and approved deviations with residual risk sit in the same record as install and commissioning — one story, not two systems.
Independent acceptance rules mean the person who did the work cannot be the one who accepts it, where your plan requires that split — for the technician, the office or an administrator alike.
Who performed it, who witnessed it — the detail a QA/QC plan usually promises and a spreadsheet usually loses.
Honest limits: there is no statistical process control or sampling-plan engine, so a QA/QC plan that relies on formal AQL sampling for repetitive production items needs that sampling math done outside the record, with the results brought in as evidence. There is also no dedicated ITP document generator — the plan's inspection regime is expressed as hold-point templates, which is enforced but not the same artefact as a formatted plan document a reviewer might expect.
Questions people ask
Does Veristep write the QA/QC plan for us?
No — the plan is a decision your firm makes about roles, standards and process. Veristep turns that plan into templates and enforced hold points once you have written it.
Can the plan differ by project?
Yes. Templates are written per equipment type and can differ between projects; nothing forces one plan across every job.
Does it cover design-phase QA, or only field inspections?
Both, in the same record — testability checks, discipline sign-off and approved deviations sit alongside the field's inspections and tests.
How are non-conformances distinguished from routine punch items?
By pattern and severity: a repeated deficiency becomes an NCR with a formal corrective-action record and its own closure evidence, rather than staying a single punch item.