Aiming to understand the relationships between the functions of project management offices (PMO) and the performance of new product development projects, this paper presents correlations between the effort in performing PMO functions and the results of performance indicators on a sample of 35 companies that develop new products and have PMOs in their organizational structure to support it. It was analysed these functions from the point of view of performance indicators related to project´s triple constraints. The data was analysed using Spearman correlation. In general, it was observed that PMOs are not focused on activities as providing project success on time, cost or scope. Schedule performance is correlated to functions of reporting project status to senior managers. Cost performance is correlated to benefit management. No function presented any correlation with preventing scope changes. These results point that the presence of PMO on the companies' structure does not guarantee the success on project´s triple constraints maybe because it is focused on organizational project management and not in performing project management as well.

The project-based learning (PBL) approach has been a part of the University of Brasilia's programme from the inception of its Industrial Engineering syllabus. Production Systems Project 4 course is one among eight courses that drive the utilization of PBL approach at the curriculum, the subject of this study, in which we present a set of analyses of the projects developed between 2013 and 2016. The projects involved real-world problems, related to public and private sector enterprises in Brazil's Federal District. The conducted analyses aimed to identify the organizations' profiles and the PPC (Production Planning and Control) techniques which were used to achieve project objectives. Therefore, statistical analyses were performed, such as Correlation Analysis, Cluster Analysis, as well as qualitative documental analysis. The results of this study indicate the profile of external partners that have the highest probability of achieving satisfactory results, as well as the main planning elements which impact the final grades of the projects. KeywordsActive learning. Case study. Production engineering. Production, planning and control. of knowledge, internalized along the course, and before the program's conclusion. It is seen as essential that engineers develop not only purely technical proficiencies, but also interdisciplinary skills such as cooperation and project management (Taajamaa et al., 2013). In this sense, problem-based learning and project-based learning, both commonly called as PBL, have been widely applied as a teaching and learning strategy (Bassily et al., 2007;Kadlowec et al., 2007;Ras et al., 2007;Gillette et al., 2014;Lin et al., 2014;Jeon et al., 2014; De los Ríos-Carmenado et al., 2015).In order to improve students' knowledge retention, and better relate theory to practice by adopting a methodology that is focused on the students themselves, beginning in 2009 the University of Brasilia (UnB) has implemented an innovative undergraduate program in Industrial Engineering (Prince & Felder, 2006;Lima et al., 2012;Zindel et al., 2012). Based on the PBL approach, the course aims to foster graduate students' abilities to handle real world problems through the development of specific projects that encourage a systemic and professional interaction with several different environments.According to Zindel et al. (2012), the proposed approach promotes students' learning by means of assisting an external third party with their internal improvement projects. External partners, as pubic or private companies, will typically propose problems that are handled by course students in a group setting. These real-world case studies are developed through a project-based approach, where planning and execution are graded separately, in order to verify the undergraduates' capacity to apply technical knowledge on these authentic situations. In this context, this paper's goal is to present the results of the PBL approach in one specific course, termed Production Systems Project 4 (PSP4). This course is taught in the ...

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This paper analyses the relationships between the Project Management Offices (PMOs) functions and the results of performance indicators of product development projects, considering the triple constraint: time, cost, quality. A survey was conducted on a sample of 35 Brazilian manufacturing companies, which have a Product Development Process and a support of PMO for product projects. Although the surveyś results pointed out the presence of Project Management Offices on companies' structure, it does not guarantee the success on project´s triple constraints, the benefits management was a PMO function correlated to cost performance. It suggests that if a company structure projects as programs, an effort to guarantee the focus on benefits rather than only on project's results can drive good performance on costs.

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PurposeThis paper aims to explore how new product development (NPD)-based project management offices (PMOs) work, their drivers to deliver performance and their project success impact.Design/methodology/approachThe study used a survey of 35 Brazilian and multi-national companies that identified the effort to perform a list of PMO functions, some PMO drivers in the company and five project performance perception indicators. The authors apply a specific set of statistics to uncover the relations between these dimensions of interest.FindingsThe factorial analysis allows us to find the main functions influencing each other. The project teams’ perception of project management (PM) performance is suggested as a success factor that drives PMOs when working on portfolio management issues, managing project files and promoting PM over the company.Practical implicationsThis paper contributes to a contingency approach for designing a project machine involving PMOs to support NPD projects. Managers can set the most suitable PMO functions avoiding mimicry when structuring their NPD efforts.Originality/valuePMOs have impacted team satisfaction and control of project data but not indicators related to triple constraints.

Worldwide, communities living near ports and environmentalists put pressure on port authorities to mitigate their environmental impacts with the major ones being water and air pollution. In 2011, Brazil, through the National Agency of Waterway Transportation (ANTAQ), advanced towards monitoring and environmental control in national ports. ANTAQ signed a cooperation agreement with the Interdisciplinary Center for Transport Studies at the University of Brasilia (CEFTRU/UnB) to develop a methodology to calculate the environmental performance of port facilities. The result of this cooperation is the Environmental Performance Index, known as IDA, which assumes values between zero and one (0 ≤ IDA ≤ 1). Optimum port environmental performance is reached when the index is equal to 1. ANTAQ computes IDA for thirty Brazilian ports located in the North, Northeast, South and Southeast and administered by federal, state or local agencies. This paper analyzes the evolution of the environmental performance in Brazilian ports and investigates whether environmental performance differs between them. The study comprises the period between the first semester of 2012 and the first semester of 2016 (2012.01-2016.01). The application of tests for means comparison to the data revealed that: a) environmental performance was lower in the ports managed directly by the federal government when compared to the environmental performance of the delegated ports; b) the environmental performance of the ports of the macro-regions South/Southeast was higher than in the ports of the macro-regions North/Northeast. The paper is not dedicated to understanding the reasons for the differences in port environmental performance during the period considered. That should be the subject of additional research.