It has been more than a half century since Armand Feigenbaum first conceived of the strategy for the manufacturing sector, yet quality costing strategies have not found a foothold among engineering firms. This study was aimed at constructing a set of theories that explains possible barriers to acceptance of the Feigenbaum strategy by analyzing attitudes and opinions of players in an actual engineering firm and the culture in which they work.

Modeled after the Feigenbaum approach and tailored to the business model of engineering and architectural firms, a system was developed to classify and record costs of quality. A local office of a large engineering firm was recruited to apply the system on a hand-picked design project. Using qualitative study with a phenomenology approach, records were examined and participants were interviewed.

The observed concepts and emergent hypotheses begin to tell an interesting story that might be the key to the ultimate success or failure of the Feigenbaum approach to quality costing in engineering firms. Concepts related to the mechanics of a quality cost reporting system were originally thought to be overwhelming when applied to a working engineering firm; instead they have been observed to be relatively simple and have practical and straightforward solutions. However, concepts related to perceptions of quality and quality management appear to be much more daunting barriers to a prevention-based system due to policies and perceptions that have persisted for years.