1 INTRODUCTION Quality is a fundamental issue in the construction sector. It is increasing in importance not only in eco- nomic terms, but also from the social and environ- mental perspective. Currently, to satisfy customers' needs, general contractors have paid more attention than before to complete quality inspection and defect management until final acceptance of a project is made by the customer. According to Young et al (2008) regardless of this effort, however, many deficiencies and discrep- ancies are still identified near the completion of a project. The problems are due to: • the lack of number of on-site staff for quality management, • too much workload for crews to meet deadlines, • non-unified traditional checklists and a number of documents to manually fill out, • poor communications among project partici- pants, and • complicated and labor-intensive interior finish- ing work process. These problems require additional work to correct the defects that often result in the delay of project close out. To efficiently cope with such problems, there has been a strong need to develop a management system which helps site quality managers promptly identify and correct defects on finishing materials and facili- ties, and assure their quality. The primary objective of this paper is to define a conceptual model for the quality management so as to detect, place, hold responsible and properly solve the defects generated in the execution phase of an industrial construction project. This model is then implemented in a web-based tool to facilitate the ac- cess to the stored information (SIDEM). The system can collect defect data on site, and ef- fectively manage the statuses and results of the cor- rective works performed. The proposed SIDEM can provide a structured repository of data where various project participants can place and maintain the data in real time for seamless information acquisition and prompt deci- sion making for corrective actions when problems are found. A web-based system for quality inspection and defect management of industrial building construction N. Forcada, E. Margalida, A. Fuertes, M. Casals, M. Gangolells, X. Roca, M. Macarulla Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Dept. of Construction Engineering, Terrassa, Barcelona, Spain. ABSTRACT: Quality inspection and defect management in industrial building construction is one of the ma- jor factors that general contractors have to consider for improving customer satisfaction and gain competitive advantage. This paper describes a web-based system for quality inspection and defect management (SIDEM). The system is derived from the elements of ISO 9001 standard, and assist management in tracking of inspection/test re- sults, defects management, non-conformities analysis, preventive and corrective measures, etc. A Quality Inspection database and a relational database structure were devised to effectively interconnect the essential information such as facility, trades, trade contractors, materials, and defect types required for a com- puterized quality inspection and defect management for industrial building construction. In SIDEM, all collected and analyzed information is stored into the database of the central server system al- lowing general contractors to effectively monitor and statistically analyze the statuses and results of the qual- ity inspection and defect management in real time.