Construction delays: a case study in the Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

he construction industry is one of the industrial sectors with the lowest rates of fulfilment of contract deadlines, especially in developing countries. This fact has been the focus of considerable discussions seeking to identify the causes of the delays. The main purpose of this paper is to use factor analysis to identify the factors that are correlated with delay, contemplating exclusively residential real estate projects and using a city in the Brazilian Amazon as a case study. Based on the database from the government agency that authorises constructions in the city of Belém (City Planning Department - Secretaria Municipal de Urbanismo, SEURB) and data from construction companies, the study investigated 274 construction projects from the past 11 years. Factor analysis and work with the variables that can be identified and measured in the initial phase of the project, i.e., during the feasibility study, demonstrate that the physical characteristics of the apartments and the construction project are the primary causes for variations in construction delays; these causes have not yet been reported in the literature. We hope that the results of this study will contribute to more consistent forecasting of construction time, minimising the risk of delays.

Construction duration predictive model based on factorial analysis and fuzzy logic

“…The present work is a research evolution previously published in scientific journal "Ambiente Construído", see Maués et al (2017). The research consisted of a case study based on quantitative and qualitative information of residential buildings from several construction companies operating in Northern Brazil, in order to propose a hybrid modeling method based on factorial analysis and Fuzzy systems to assist decision makers to forecasting the construction duration of vertical residential works (with multiple floors) still at the stage of analysis of economic and financial feasibility of the project.…”

“…For the elaboration of the proposed model, initially a theoretical revision was made in several articles that deal with the theme of the term of execution of work. From this research it was possible to extract among the most cited authors, the factors that influence the execution period of an enterprise, see more details in Maués et al (2017).…”

“…These weights were used to aggregate the results obtained with the defuzzification process of each of the subsets constructed in the model proposed in this research. A better description and identification of the subsets and variables are described in detail in Maués et al (2017).…”

Alterações de custo e prazo em obras públicas

“…Nesse contexto, percebe-se que os atrasos de obras públicas são recorrentes em vários países nos quais se encontram causas com características semelhantes para a realização de aditivos de prazo de contrato. Esse fato é corroborado pelo trabalho de Maués et al (2017), que afirmam que esse problema também acontece em países desenvolvidos, devido à existência de problemas estruturantes que levam à ocorrência dos atrasos nas obras. Todavia, há possibilidades de se melhorar o processo de gestão de obras, visando minimizar essas ocorrências, que, entre outros aspectos, acarretam perdas de eficiência e de resultados dos empreendimentos.…”

“…As alterações de contrato, muitas vezes, podem resultar em prejuízos para a administração pública, seja pelo impedimento do início das atividades previstas na nova edificação devido ao atraso na entrega (MAUÉS et al, 2017;FILIPPI;MELHADO, 2015), problema também identificado por autores de outros países, como Larsen et al (2016), na Dinamarca, e Mahamid (2013), na Palestina, seja pelos prejuízos econômicos gerados pela má programação do custo final de um empreendimento, fatos que geram a necessidade de realizar empenhos adicionais para que os projetos sejam concluídos. Esta situação é corroborada nas pesquisas realizadas por Flyvbjerg, Holm e Buhl (2002), na Dinamarca, Senouci, Ismail e Eldin (2016), no Qatar, Shehu et al (2014), na Malasia, e Sweis et al (2008) e Aragão (2015), no Brasil, entre outros.…”