Development and Implementation of a Specification for a Departmental Quality Management Framework

In the UK, external quality scrutiny of university engineering departments involves regular professional institution accreditation of courses and Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) assessment, together with internal university quality review mechanisms. Meeting the expectations of this scrutiny is a matter of importance to a department, made more difficult by the lack of a clear specification for the management requirements at departmental level, to fulfil the various internal and external expectations. Each engineering department has effectively been compelled to invent its own quality management system without assistance.

The Engineering Profesors' Council (EPC), a national body representing UK engineering academics, has been developing an approach to this problem for some years, and in 1996 initiated its Quality Management Project, working with selected engineering departments and engineering institutions to develop a quality management framework. This framework aims to provide a basis for effective departmental quality management and improvement, while meeting the requirements of QAA assessment and university-level audit, accreditation and internal quality reviews.

To date, the main output of the project has been the EPC Specification for a Quality Framework at Departmental Level. The Specification aims to provide guidelines on what should be done to achieve quality where it counts, at departmental level. It was developed to help departments achieve good practice in the educational process. and improve their quality performance. It also supports the assurance of quality and standards for the purpose of public accountability and the professional accreditation of courses. This paper describes the work of the project and outlines the quality management framework developed by the EPC.