FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 06, 2007

San Diego , CA — In March 2007, Quality Built®, a San Diego-based third-party consulting firm, was the first such organization to receive ISO-9001:2000 registration of its quality assurance management system after a year of intense compliance training by its in-house quality management team.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an internationally recognized standards-setting body comprised of 158 member countries around the globe. Quality Built, a quality-assurance consulting firm that provides services for developers and builders, is the largest such firm in the U.S., with more than 1,700 active construction projects in 28 states.

“I am so proud of this achievement,” stated Stan Luhr, Quality Built’s CEO and founder. Getting ISO-certified in such a short time period is a testament to the great employees who worked miracles to absolutely nail this audit.”

Receiving ISO certification of Quality Built’s quality management system has been a 12-year dream of Beth Michaelis, Quality Built’s president, who spear-headed the year-long compliance effort and worked closely with each department. “I work with multi-billion dollar builders across the country, and not one of them has achieved this goal. With Quality Built’s assistance, that will change,” she stated.

Unlike sophisticated manufacturers, government contractors, and European automakers, the U.S. homebuilding industry is conspicuously shy of certified companies. A search on public ISO websites turned up only four ISO-certified companies listed out of the more than 211,891 residential and commercial builders in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2002 Economic Census.

Quality Built services include jobsite inspection of residential and high-rise developments, utilizing patent-pending technologies to identify problems that must be corrected to improve quality. The company also innovated a builder risk-audit program that is used by leading insurance companies to provide builders with a risk-rating that is used to judge a builder’s performance. Quality Built’s field staff utilize innovative “ruggedized” computers to track everything from foundation rebar to finishes on a project. The electronic data and digital photographs taken during construction provide builders and their insurers with important information to improve construction and deliver higher quality homes. In 2006, Quality Built collected over 12 million quality checkpoints and tallied over $1.73 billion in corrected anomalies on 75,359 homes.

The service of delivering quality assurance on a jobsite and then creating policies and procedures to deliver consistent quality complicated the company’s ISO certification. Delivering a quality assurance system is hard enough, let alone having to verify the performance and metrics necessary to deliver and audit that quality. Quality Built managed to do both, and in a short time frame compared to other companies attempting to become ISO registered.

Mark Brock-Farrington, Quality Built’s director of Quality Assurance, championed the ISO effort with the full support of Quality Built’s executives. Brock-Farrington utilized his extensive experience in creating quality systems for government contractors to assist Quality Built.

Brock-Farrington retained National Quality Assurance (NQA) to conduct the independent audits of the company. NQA is known internationally as a premier provider of management support services, and is one of the largest quality registrars in existence, having registered over 15,000 world–class quality management systems. NQA clients include NASA, Boeing, Caterpillar, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and others. “I was confident that we would pass (the audit) on the first try,” Brock-Farrington said after receiving word of passing. “I just never expected the auditor to have such high praise for our company and comparing our system to other ISO-compliant world-class organizations. That is a real honor. I am most proud of the efforts of my dedicated team.”

According to Michaelis, Quality Built’s next focus is to assist its more than 2,000 builder clients with their own ISO certification programs. She stated, “I believe so much that ISO helps companies improve their consistency and achieve great results because they have defined processes that can be measured. Quality is all about knowing what is right for the customer, delivering consistency and improving customer satisfaction every day. Our industry needs that.”

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About Quality Built
Quality Built® is the nation’s largest provider of quality assurance services, operating in 28 states and serving over 170,000 units in production. More than 2,000 builders, including 17 of the 20 largest homebuilders, have relied on Quality Built for reducing construction risk. Residential, commercial and high-rise builders and developers rely on Quality Built’s patent-pending technologies, including proprietary risk capture and tracking software, to eliminate more than $1 billion in construction defect risk and improve the safety, comfort and durability of housing.

For further information, please contact:
Marketing Department…….......Tel:  800-547-5125..................Email:   marketing@qualitybuilt.com