Managing quality in projects: An empirical study

•Paper defines project quality with three dimensions.•The role of Quality in the ‘iron triangle’ of cost, time and quality is reaffirmed.•The role of ‘Organisation Quality’ as a critical success factor is established.•A mixed methodology of Partial Least Square and case studies has been applied.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the key role of quality in the ‘iron triangle of cost, time and quality’ and highlight the importance of implementing the people related ‘organisation quality’ amongst key stakeholders to deliver the success criteria of a project.The field research design comprised three stages.Stage 1: Semi-structured interviewsStage 2: Questionnaire surveys followed by a conceptual research model. The research model was validated by Partial Least Squares (PLS) modellingStage 3: Case studies of two comparable large projects based organisations (Heathrow Terminal 5 and High Speed 1).As a substantive contribution to knowledge the research defined project quality with three dimensions (viz. Design Quality, Process Quality and Organisation Quality) and identified the lack of attention to details to Organisation Quality. A mixed methodology of Partial Least Squares (PLS) and case studies was applied. The findings also helped to develop a simple but effective tool APEX (Assessing Process Excellence) to assess the key constructs of project quality and excellence. The paper also provides a summary of the best practices for managing quality.