Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of defects on the satisfaction of residential construction customers. Three working hypotheses were tested: first, defects in residential construction impact the customer satisfaction; second, different defects have different impacts on customer satisfaction; and third, interviewing customers about defects in their residential units is not a reliable method to collect data. Design/methodology/approach: The research investigated correlations between data on defects and customer satisfaction surveys carried out by a construction company on its projects. Data were cross-checked to determine what kinds of defects have the worse impact on customer satisfaction. Findings: The occurrence of defects does not necessarily jeopardize customer satisfaction, although it appears to be a concern to the customers who responded to the survey. When the occurrence of defects did interfere with customer satisfaction, it was found that the worse impacts resulted from the occurrence of multiple defects in a single unit, the inability of the construction company to communicate with the customer after a claim was filed, and the occurrence of functional defects. Results suggest that interviewing customers about the defect occurrence in their units is not a reliable method to collect data for research purposes. Practical implications: Results can be used to help companies better define continuous improvement activities and avoid the occurrence of defects that cause the worse impacts to customer satisfaction. Originality/value: Data availability is a challenge for studies on defects. This study had direct access to data from a construction company, which made the presented analyses possible.

Evaluating the impact of defects in buildings and ranking the most impactful ones enables construction companies to better choose which paths to take in light of continuous improvement activities to support more sustainable decisions regarding the design and operation of buildings. As a result, the risks of the different choices are more clearly identified while assessing all tangible and intangible aspects of residential building defects in a structured way. Although recent studies on managing construction defects in residential buildings have focused on monetary losses associated with maintenance activities based on the defect’s frequency and severity, these studies do not take into account the levels of customer satisfaction. To address this gap, this paper proposes a novel evaluation method of the impact of defects to support decision-making in managing defect occurrences in residential buildings. The goal is to rank the defects’ impact based on a combination of some critical aspects: frequency of occurrence, financial considerations on repairing such defects, the impact that these defects have on customer satisfaction, and the cost and complexity of preventing and minimizing these defect occurrences through continuous improvement activities. The method consists of a structured set of steps that use data from technical assistance departments and customer satisfaction surveys, where information about the users’ level of satisfaction and the occurrence of defects is available. In this paper, data obtained from a construction company were used to test and validate the proposed method. The method also examines the challenges and barriers associated with the technique and points out that difficulties in acquiring reliable data are a bottleneck for making conscious and sustainable decisions to address construciton defects. Moreover, the case study results highlight essential capabilities needed by companies to correctly assess the impact of defects, such as correctly logging data in a structured database and having skilled personnel to verify defects users might have complained about. The paper ends by proposing a set of guidelines to use the method and stressing that structured methods for decision-making are crucial to analyze construction defects in a structured way while also incorporating the user’s perspective. The proposed method is expected to improve sustainable managerial decisions where economic, environmental, social, and technical risks can be accounted for to enhance the quality of projects from the customer’s perspective. Such analysis can help optimize and prioritize the use of resources and minimize the economic impact of activities on the construction company.

Este trabalho tem por objetivo principal a proposição de diretrizes para o desenvolvimento do Design for Assembly (DFA) para a produção de habitações unifamiliares. Tais diretrizes envolvem considerações a respeito da apresentação dos projetos e sobre a padronização das informações que definem a sequência de montagem dos principais elementos de uma edificação em LSF, visando a melhorar a construtibilidade dos projetos. Foi desenvolvido um exemplo de aplicação do DFA a um elemento de uma edificação em LSF. Este estudo foi baseado em conceitos obtidos na revisão bibliográfica, relacionados com a Engenharia Concorrente, Lean Design e DFA. Além disso, visando a destacar a importância na inovação de processos na construção, o atual contexto de projeto do LSF no Brasil foi caracterizado por meio de entrevistas com profissionais que têm utilizado esta tecnologia. O produto final deste artigo visa a contribuir para o avanço dos estudos a respeito do processo de projeto do LSF, além de promover o uso de conceitos pouco abordados na indústria da construção, como o DFA.

Resumo As grandes corporações causam os danos mais significativos, mas podem contribuir para alcançar os Objetivos de Desenvolvimento Sustentável (ODS) e suas prioridades globais. O objetivo desta pesquisa foi mapear os potenciais impactos relacionados aos ODS, analisando o setor empresarial da construção civil brasileiro, incluindo algumas das principais empresas brasileiras dos seguintes segmentos: construtoras, fábricas e cimenteiras, analisando seus relatórios de sustentabilidade de acordo com o modelo da Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Foi identificado que apenas quatro entre os dezessete ODS não são diretamente afetados pelos aspectos materiais do setor de construção brasileiro. Por isso, foram feitas sugestões para a mitigação dos impactos causados, incluindo principalmente medidas governamentais de regulação e fiscalização, bem como medidas empresariais relativas ao modelo de gestão. Com base na teoria da Visão Baseada na Atenção, foram sugeridas contribuições aplicáveis ao modelo de gestão das empresas visando o alcance dos ODS.

Timber construction is a contemporary solution where sales are performed through in-store trade. Timber house e-commerce may stimulate global markets, and in times of intense remote routines, it is useful to improve the performance of the wood and construction sectors. Timber housing producers and dealers are the research object under analysis to study the electronic market of this Brazilian sector on Instagram^®. With just over four hundred companies, nearly 80% of this sector already utilizes this virtual social network. We validated the outcomes through a significant sampling of all 315 companies with corporate profiles to identify their competences, goals, and failures. The profiles prioritize the elucidation of products and basic features, not yet being ready for the virtual sales of timber houses. The study makes it clear that our results typify a sector marked by a developing electronic market. Inserting a description of product prices and detailed specifications may change this status. From failures and competences, a classification for social profiles was proposed to measure the progress and virtual participation of each individual.

The large corporations cause the most significant damages, but they can contribute to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and its global priorities. The purpose of this research was the map the main impacts related to SDG, analysing the business sector of Brazilian civil construction, including some of the main Brazilian companies of the following segments: construction companies, factories and cement plants, analysing their sustainability reports according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) model. Only four out of the seventeen SDG were found not to be directly affected by the material aspects of the Brazilian construction industry. Therefore, suggestions were made for the mitigation of the impacts caused, including mostly governmental actions for regulation and enforcement, as well as entrepreneurial action concerning the management model. Based on the Attention-Based View theory, contributions have been suggested applicable to the companies’ management model seeking to achieve the SDG.