Optimization in Territorial Partitioning to Improve the Performance of a Common Building Maintenance Service Contract: A Case Study of a Public Agency in Paraná State, Brazil

Abstract

All public administration contracts must be evaluated in order to improve their performance while respecting the limits established by laws and regulations. The purpose of this article is to apply an approach to improve the performance of a common building maintenance service contract for the Paraná State Court of Justice (PRCJ), which has a total built area of ​​544 283,79 m² in 224 buildings distributed over 161 counties, by optimizing the territorial partitioning of Paraná State. To partition the state into 14 regions, a binary integer linear programming (BILP) mathematical model is applied to the facilities location problem (FLP) in three scenarios. The results show that Scenario 3 (in which the location of the 14 maintenance offices and the configuration of their areas of activity were optimized) is the best in terms of minimizing the distances traveled by maintenance teams. In this scenario, the total distance traveled would be 9 775 km per day (instead of the current 11 150 km), achieving savings of around 12,3% when compared to the current solution. With this solution, in addition to the distance, the direct and indirect costs associated with the displacement of work teams and the time spent on their corresponding trips would be minimized. Furthermore, the users of maintenance services could be served more quickly, resulting in a higher number of services and greater satisfaction for the target audience of the contract.