ABSTRACT
The astonishing accuracy of some ancient buildings is evidence not only of an architect’s brilliance in imagination and design but also the construction managers’ practical construction expertise and their precise quality control. While many were paid for their work in labouring to construct magnificent structures over the millennia, hundreds of thousands of slaves were also used and abused. There have been ‘inspectors’ and expert ‘supervisors’ who undertook quality control-type duties throughout history from the earliest Palaeolithic times when humans started to build structures. Architects in ancient Greece, when designing temples, also took hands-on roles on site, as project managers. The scarcity of professionals in the construction industry seem to have been a recurrent theme in history. The arch was either constructed in rapid time, partly due to the façades recycling reliefs and sculptures from other monuments, or it was a pre-existing arch that was simply refaced.
