Project Management in Brazil: A Reflection About the Brazilian Context and Its Impact on Social Housing Projects

Social housing projects have stood out in the Brazilian construction industry, whether due to the great social impact in a country with a large housing deficit, or due to government subsidies, especially in the last 10 years. These projects were less affected by the substantial economic downturn that characterized the industry. The management systems of these projects were conditioned by both financial and regulatory managerial systems based on ISO 9001 and other performance-based standards. The scope of this chapter is to describe these systems and discuss their influence on project management practices. Thus, this chapter first outlines the Brazilian construction industry and highlights the social housing projects. Next, it describes a set of circumstances that had a substantial impact on project management processes, including a set of public financing mechanisms for housing projects, which was conditioned on the implementation of a quality management system developed specifically for construction companies. This system, referenced in ISO 9001, specifies the normative requirements for the management of construction projects. It was harmonized with other projects that make up the Brazilian Habitat Quality and Productivity Program. Another significant initiative for project management, which has been disseminated, is the Brazilian Standard on Performance-Based Buildings (NBR 15.575), which, along with the implementation of various management systems, has been promoting substantial changes in project management processes including: better definition of design scope and design management processes, an improvement in the integration of the design and construction phases, and improvement of procurement processes; these are outlined in the chapter. A final section describes how some of these processes have been used in projects of another nature, mostly public and corporate projects.