Reasons for the lack of competitiveness of the portuguese construction industry

The last few years have confirmed what was mostly feared: Portuguese construction industry suffers from a chronic disease - the lack of competitiveness. Symptoms have long been recognised in several construction projects: frequent delays, cost overruns, deficient safety, absent quality. The authors have been carrying out several studies whose aiming at are clarify reasons for the lack of competitiveness of national construction industry on the four items mentioned above. This paper occurs mainly about the aims of PhD` survey about construction delays. It has the following mains components: (1) to research and analysis bibliography and establish a common set of causes and background reasons for the problem; (2) to inquire to Portuguese construction stakeholders on the causes and background reasons for project delays following from their experience in recent projects; (3) to establish possible paths to solve the problem. The survey results appear to confirm the original list of causes for delays of the study. The mains reasons are related with designer problems, poor productivity, procurement system, overly optimistic planning, and frequent change orders during construction and so on. Thereafter, the paper will seek what could possibly be done and from which parties, in order to correct the above problems and improve construction competitiveness. The most highly ranked on a scale of relevance by stakeholders were implementation a national database with the quantity works list for different construction projects, a more appropriate and efficient organizational systems within design teams and a need for greater care on the part of the owners when they prepare their schedules and preliminary programmes.Science and Technology Foundation, in Portuguese - Project SAPIENS Nº 4762 "Reasons for the lack of accomplishment of schedule, costs and safety objectives in construction".LEONARDO DA VINCI - Community Vocational Training Action Programme Second, Phase 2000-2006 - Project PL/04/B/P/PP/-174 417 "Recognition of needs and creation of professional training in the area of preparation and management of infrastructure construction projects financed by the European Union"

Claims in railway projects in Portugal

Comunicação apresentada na CIB W102-2005, Lisboa, Portugal, 18 - 20 Maio 2005.The importance of claims and disputes in Portuguese public contracting is so large nowadays that most construction managers tend to consider a specific final stage of the project life cycle for dealing with them. The aim of this paper is to characterise claims in railway projects conducted in the last few years in Portugal. A survey was made to project promoters and data from a number of projects has been collected and classified according to usual claim causes as currently adopted in literature. The results of the survey show that project changes and delays contribute to roughly 99% of the claims surveyed

Intelligent power system protection data management

The Power Flow is the most important issue to ensure an efficient yet affordable system. To maintain a low failure electrical breakdown or blackout analysis of faults leads to appropriate protection settings which can be computed in order to select suitable fuse, circuit breaker size and type of relay. The studies and detection of these faults is necessary to ensure that the reliability and stability of the power system do not suffer a decrement as a result of a critical event such a fault. This project will analyze a power systems under fault conditions

Determination of flow resistance coefficient for vegetation in open channel: laboratory study

This study focused on determination of flow resistances coefficient for grass in an open channel. Laboratory works were conducted to examine the effects of varying of roughness elements on the flume to determine flow resistance coefficient and also to determine the optimum flow resistance with five different flow rate, Q. Laboratory study with two type of vegetation which are Cow Grass and Pearl Grass were implementing to the bed of a flume. The roughness coefficient, n value is determine using Manning’s equation while Soil Conservation Services (SCS) method was used to determine the surface resistance. From the experiment, the flow resistance coefficient for Cow Grass in range 0.0008 - 0.0039 while Pearl Grass value for the flow resistance coefficient are in between 0.0013 - 0.0054. As a conclusion the vegetation roughness value in open channel are depends on density, distribution type of vegetation used and physical characteristic of the vegetation itsel

The development of a portable optical system for telemonitoring of skin blood oxygen level

Oxygen is one of the keys parameters required for tissues metabolism to ensure life sustainability. Without it, human’s health would suffer and eventually result in fatal. Cells consume oxygen to break down sugar to produce adenosine triphosphate (ATP) during cellular respiration [1]. ATPs are the main source of energy for metabolic functions [2] and every cell in the body, especially muscles cell, for its ability to store and use energy; muscle would not contract or relax without ATP. Cell is not able to function well under the condition of low oxygen level, thus it would lead to hypoxemia. If left untreated, severe hypoxemia can be fatal [3]

An Exploratory Study Of Lean Construction in Portugal – Owners and Designers`Perspectives

21th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 21), July 2013, Fortaleza, BrazilAs Lean Construction steadily grows all over the world, not much is heard about this new paradigm in Portugal, and the Portuguese construction industry still seems unaware of its potentials. This study aims at characterizing and analyzing the main causes for waste that could be tackled with Lean Construction solutions and techniques in the Portuguese construction sector. It is assumed that lean construction can greatly contribute to the Portuguese construction sector by the positive costbenefit results. An analysis is made on how lean construction can be beneficial in the Portuguese context, from the perspectives of owners and designers. The study is an exploratory qualitative research that is observational in nature. Overall, 8 private owners, 10 public owners and 13 design firms participated in this study. The results obtained are in line with similar studies and indicate that the origin of most waste in Portuguese projects has its roots in the design phase due to owners’ actions. This work seeks to demonstrate the key role that owners have in the adoptions of lean construction methods and principles, which can be implemented to mitigate the main problems found

Establishing measures to improve design quality in the Portuguese construction industry

The Portuguese construction industry is currently experiencing great challenges. Along with the redefinition of its legal framework, so as to make it more efficient and bring it up to date, the sector is going through stagnation in the private market and a slump in the public construction market, mostly on account of the current state of economy country. It is very important to find ways to correct the problems and to make the sector more competitive. Recently there have been several conferences, symposiums and publications which have studied the reasons for its lack of competitiveness. One of the main reasons that have been identified is the recurrent poor quality of project designs. Previous studies have often found that designs contain a lot of errors and omissions. This paper wills critically discussion the problem of poor quality design in Portugal using literature and data from a set of interviews with expert construction managers. The reasons for the poor quality of designs have been established from the outcomes of a national survey undertaken and a series of interviews of experts

Why can’t main project management functions be achieved in most construction projects?

The lack of accomplishment of the main management functions in construction projects had been reported worlwide. The symptoms are well recognized, like cost and time overruns, deficient quality and lack of safety. To help clarifying the reasons for this evidence, a survey was carried to Portuguese construction stakeholders, based on an Internet inquiry, aimed to characterize past projects. While time for the answers is still running, the main important conclusion retrieved from the survey is that industry practicioners do not have, or do not want to provide, quantitative information about past projects. This, in fact, may be signalled as the first reason for the lack of competitiveness of the construction industry in Portugal

What are the benefits of the Portuguese public investment projects?

The aim of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding about the effective benefits of public investment projects carried out in Portugal, since their entry into the European Union, in 1986, so far and, additionally, to know the main causes for cost Project deviations. Since the entry of Portugal in European Union, the country image has changed, where public investment in infrastructure played a critical role. However one question remains unanswered which are frequently asked by Portuguese people, namely: • What are the Benefits of the Portuguese Public Investment Projects? In addition to the above question, the present study will try as well to answer the following question: • What were the main causes for the project deviations? This research allowed conclude that, although cost/investment deviations have been observed in the majority of projects, and reported through public audits, the benefits deviation analysis between the estimated values to society and what their realization was, are in the most cases, unknown. Portuguese national authorities are concerned to measure the deviation of costs/investment, but nobody has analyzed so far the benefits deviation for society and community.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Case study : the Metro Transportes do Sul Concession & Risk Sharing and Public Financial Compensations

Objective: The goal of this study is to provide a case-study on the Metro Transportes do Sul (MTS) Concession trough an analysis of the risk sharing and financial compensations. Over the last 20 years, Portugal has been experiencing a large wave of PPP contracts. Concessions experiencing unbalance risk allocation is a constant problem in important projects and the MTS concession has been the most recent example of it. Renegotiation Agreement, calculation of compensations, traffic forecasts, no connection among bodies and unbalanced risk allocation are some of the reasons for a detailed analysis of this concession project Methodology: This paper is divided in two categories: First, a description of the concession contract, the delays in the MTS concession and the renegotiation process; Secondly, an analysis of the financial compensation from the Government and the Risk Allocation situation. Findings: This paper concludes that due to the inaccurate traffic forecast and the lack of coordination among the different bodies in the concession project there is a strong imbalance in the current risk allocation the Government was bound to be the largest contributor of the MTS concession trough financial compensations to the concessionaire Recommendation: The recommendations to this concession project are ground on the idea of a better management of the concession in general, avoiding Demand risk ex-ante, providing better technical condition for monitoring and controlling and more important, analyses traffic forecast on more solid indicators