Issue: Sometimes the concrete mixtures were far too watery. We quickly had to figure out why and correct the problem to ensure our concrete was structurally sound and dried in time.

Causes: Sand was delivered directly from the river, which caused the concrete’s moisture to vary based on how recently the sand was delivered. Some community members were also adding more than the allotted number of water buckets to the mixture.

Solutions: We kept detailed records of sand deliveries and made note of how much water to use based on how fresh the sand was. We also worked with our site coordinator to give morning announcements in both English and SiSwati to share how many buckets to use that day and emphasize the importance of not adding extra water.

Issue: About halfway through the construction process, our Design and Construction Managers identified that we needed to change the widths of some of our walls, which conflicted with our established tolerancing.

Solution: We worked closely with our Bridge Corps—a group of professional engineers mentoring us throughout the duration of the project—to understand the implications of the design changes and establish new tolerances.

Issue: A small group of students that didn’t include a QCM stayed back at our homestead to bend suspenders out of rebar. The group didn’t quality check their work, which resulted in 70 mis-bent pieces of rebar.

Solution: This issue taught us that quality control is a group responsibility, and we had to ensure all of our teammates were conducing intermittent QC checks when they were working on tasks without a QCM present. Following this incident, we emphasized the importance of quality control in our morning meetings and made sure groups working off-site were informed of proper QC procedures before beginning their work.