Laying the Groundwork for Something Bigger
When I first started North Valley Precision, I wasn’t just thinking about how to win the next client. I was thinking about how to build something that would last. Quality Assurance is not a short game—it’s about consistency, trust, and long-term performance. That means we needed more than talent and hustle. We needed infrastructure that could support excellence for years to come.
Most people think of infrastructure as just software or machines. But real infrastructure goes beyond that. It’s your processes. It’s your training. It’s your ability to scale without dropping the ball. It’s the foundation that holds everything together when the pace picks up, when clients push harder, and when the stakes get higher.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this journey, it’s that you can’t fake quality. In regulated industries—where lives, safety, and massive investments are on the line—your QA systems either stand up or they fall apart. And what holds them up is infrastructure.
Systems Over Superheroes
In the early days, it was easy to rely on rockstar team members. We had people who could juggle everything, fix anything, and make it all look effortless. But as we started to scale, I realized we couldn’t rely on individual brilliance forever. We needed systems—repeatable, teachable, and trackable.
That meant documenting what worked. Creating playbooks. Standardizing how we test, how we track issues, how we communicate with clients. It meant investing time and energy into getting things out of people’s heads and into processes that could scale.
I’ve always said that the best QA teams don’t just catch problems—they prevent them. But that only works if your infrastructure is strong enough to keep things from slipping through the cracks. Today, our systems are built to flag issues early, maintain traceability, and keep quality consistent across every project, no matter the team or timeline.
Building a Culture of Quality
Tools and workflows are important, but they’re nothing without the right mindset behind them. One of the most important parts of long-term QA infrastructure is culture.
We don’t treat quality like a department. It’s not a handoff at the end of a process. At North Valley Precision, quality is something that’s baked into everything we do—from onboarding to delivery to how we hire. Every person here, regardless of role, understands that quality isn’t someone else’s job. It’s theirs.
That culture didn’t happen by accident. We built it through training, through mentorship, and by setting clear expectations. We talk about quality in every team meeting, and we celebrate when our systems catch something early—before it becomes a problem for a client.
For us, long-term excellence isn’t about being perfect. It’s about caring deeply and improving constantly. That mindset is just as much a part of our infrastructure as any test suite or dashboard.
Technology That Actually Helps
There’s a lot of talk in QA right now about automation, AI, and digital transformation. I’ve seen too many companies get caught up in shiny tools that overpromise and underdeliver. We’ve taken a different approach.
At North Valley Precision, we invest in technology that serves our people—not the other way around. Our infrastructure is designed to reduce noise, increase visibility, and free up our teams to do what they do best: solve real problems.
That means building custom test automation frameworks that align with our clients’ needs. It means having clean data pipelines that support real-time reporting and decision-making. And it means always asking, “Will this make our work more reliable, or just more complicated?”
We’re not chasing buzzwords. We’re building smart, flexible infrastructure that grows with us and supports quality every step of the way.
Training the Next Generation
One of the most overlooked parts of QA infrastructure is people development. You can have the best tools and the tightest processes, but if you don’t have skilled professionals behind them, none of it matters.
That’s why we’ve built training into the core of how we operate. Every new hire goes through a deep onboarding process that doesn’t just cover what we do—but why we do it. We teach our standards, our expectations, and our approach to working with clients. We show them how to think critically, not just check boxes.
As we grow, we’re also investing in our leaders. I want our team leads to think like owners—to spot risk early, to coach others, and to represent our values inside and out. That kind of leadership is part of what makes North Valley Precision more than just a QA vendor. It’s what turns us into a long-term partner for our clients.
Playing the Long Game
Everything we’re building at North Valley Precision is designed to last. I’m not interested in short-term wins that compromise quality. I’m focused on building a company that’s still delivering best-in-class QA five, ten, fifteen years from now.
That’s what infrastructure is all about. It’s not flashy. It’s not always easy. But it’s the reason we’ve been able to scale without losing what made us great in the first place. It’s the reason clients trust us with critical work. And it’s the reason our team can be proud of what they do every day.
As someone who started this company from the ground up, I don’t take any of that for granted. Brandon Erickson from Wisconsin didn’t build North Valley Precision to be average—we built it to set the bar. And the only way to do that is to invest in the things that matter most: systems, people, and a culture that never settles. That’s how you build long-term QA excellence. And that’s what we’re doing—one solid brick at a time.