We’ve all been there before: you select that perfect bench, bollard, or bike rack for your park or public space only to find out that within a week the furnishing was vandalized or even stolen. Site furnishing take the most abuse compared to any other park element, so before you select that perfect furnishing here are a few things to consider.

Good communication is often a topic of discussion when it comes to safety and/or quality, as poor or insufficient communication can lead to serious problems. When performing a root cause analysis for a safety incident or non-conformance item discovered during a quality inspection, it’s not unusual to discover poor communication as a root cause or contributing factor.

When discussing backcountry trails, one of the first questions I usually get asked is, “Do our new or existing trails need to be ADA compliant?”

If compliance measures aren’t practical due to terrain, access for equipment is difficult and will impact the environment negatively, or federal laws that protect threatened or endangered species will not allow this level of construction then they often do not need to be compliant. In many cases, backcountry trails meet most, if not all, of these exceptions.

A contractor’s track record of performance on a project in the area of quality is a huge factor in their success. Not only in earning repeat business, but also in attracting new customers. It’s inevitable that a contractor will experience at least some failure in the form of non-conformance items (services or constructed/installed items that do not meet specified requirements). What separates the successful contractor from the rest is their ability to learn from these mistakes as well as calculate the cost of these failures or mistakes.