THE PROCESS TIMELINE FOR
SUSTAINABLE CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT: CASE STUDY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN
EDUCATIONAL CENTRE
Thais Taba da
Silva
Instituto
Federal de São Paulo – Campus Suzano
E-mail:
thaistaba.s@gmail.com
Márcio Rodrigues
Clementino
Instituto
Federal de São Paulo – Campus Suzano
E-mail:
clementino_marcio@hotmail.com
Adriano Maniçoba
da Silva
Instituto
Federal de São Paulo – Campus Suzano
E-mail:
adrianoms@ifsp.edu.br
Wilson Yoshio
Tanaka
Instituto
Federal de São Paulo – Campus Suzano
E-mail:
w.tanaka@ifsp.edu.br
Eugenio de
Felice Zampini
Instituto
Federal de São Paulo – Campus Suzano
E-mail:
eugenio.zampini@ifsp.edu.br
Submission: 29/03/2018
Accept: 29/03/2018
ABSTRACT
Entrepreneurship
is hard work, especially when it comes to the creation of an innovative,
ecologically correct and sustainable project, and the small entrepreneur, in
addition to facing bureaucratic and fiscal obstacles, has great difficulty in
running his business, planning and optimizing his production for lack
structured management knowledge. This is what happens with the company studied,
where the construction of an educational centre, thought to be a model of
ecological and sustainable building, did not have a schedule of execution, thus
becoming dependent on very short term planning, accomplished at each step,
rather than a structured action as a whole. In this sense, the Critical Path
Method (CPM), which uses simple estimates for the duration of the building
stages and the PERT technique, was implemented among a variety of schedules and
methods for planning and control of works execution. This method is suitable
and simple to use by small businesses. This methodology, easy to be understood
and implemented, generated benefit to the company, allowing planning,
predictability and control of the works.
Keywords: planning, control, sustainability,
CPM, PERT.
1. INTRODUCTION
The process of controlling the work reflects directly
on the performance of the production; with the most commons shortcomings in the
construction process the low productivity, waste and quality (BRITO; FERREIRA, 2015).
Brito and Ferreira (2015), points out that the role of
production is to know and correct the deviations in relation to planned, before
they occur, and continuously evaluating the quality of the planned project. The
timelines, the network diagrams and the balance lines are used as the main
planning techniques.
In this way, the schedules are the most common tool
used in building construction management, although there are some limitations
in the activities that cause changes in critical paths.
Creating a sustainable educational Centre requires a
lot of determination from the managers and workers which are involved in this
project. The company, in which the study was developed, started the process of
building the sustainable educational Centre from the decision of changing the
production of ornamental plants from a site located in the neighborhood of
Pindorama, in Mogi das Cruzes, to this Centre.
Thus, the study is part of a process of implementation
of the program to optimize and accelerate the educational Centre construction.
A program of planning and control was started to organize the activities on a
schedule, which was structured to be used in the creation process, organizing
and establishing goals for the construction stages, which, originally, was not
part of the building activities. The absence of this method was causing
overtime for the job conclusion and consequently some delay in obtaining the
expected results.
This is the structuring of an educational Centre by
the bioconstruction process, which means it was based on natural resources
sustainable. This methodology is slower than the conventional ways of
constructions, once it is necessary to be carried out in stages. The project of
the educational Centre is divided in 20 structures, three of which are already
in progress. The others will be built within an estimated deadline of 24
months.
The objective of this research was to develop a
mechanism to accelerate the production orders and to increase the efficiency of
this process. The management of this operation covers a wide variety of
subjects, including construction processes, agribusiness processes, small
business processes and so on. Moreover, from the premise that operational
processes require control, direction, planning and action, it was verified the
necessity of the search for automation of the planning and control of the
construction stages.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1.
Social
entrepreneurship
According
to Oliveira (2004), the concept of social entrepreneurship is recent, with less
than 30 years; it is a concept very close to volunteering or charity. Some
scholars point to Luther King, Gandhi, among others, as social entrepreneurs,
as a result of their leadership and innovation capacities for large-scale
change.
Airo
(2012) defines social entrepreneur as someone working in an entrepreneurial way
to benefit the social, without aiming at maximizing profits. They are
innovative, visionary, creative and determined, eventually, they are leaders working
in all types of companies. They are important agents of social change.
The
definition of social entrepreneurship varies from its broadest form to the most
restricted one. Broadly speaking, social entrepreneurship refers to innovative
activities with a social purpose in their profitable form (as in social and
commercial investments, or in their corporate social entrepreneurship strand),
in their non-profit form, or in mixed forms (such as hybrid structures formed
by unprofitable and profitable approaches simultaneously). From a more
restricted perspective, social entrepreneurship usually refers to the
phenomenon of applying knowledge of business competencies to the nonprofit
sector, as it happens in organizations that find innovative ways to make money
(FÉLIX et al., 2012).
2.2.
Schedules
In line with the study by Codas
(1987), World War II required the creation of more effective planning methods,
since, besides the large quantity of data, they involved the military, navy and
army of at least three countries. Thus, the operational research was created to
supply this need and the concept of project management emerged in the USA at
the end of the 1950s, applied to implementation of enterprises and analysis of
computer systems development.
According to Silva Júnior and
Santos (2015), projects are currently considered as a dominant form of work in
organizations, once the project management is one of the means to reach the
company goals that have origins from various market stimuli and requests or
from the offers of new products or services.
The schedule can be seen as a
refinement of the network data, since it, according to Silva Júnior and Santos
(2015), includes information, resources (material and human) to carry out each
task and constraints, limitations and assumptions.
2.2.1.
Program
Evolution and Review Technique (PERT) / Critical Path Method (CPM)
According
to Codas (1987), the planning methods developed were those of network analysis,
such as CPM (Critical Path Method, 1957) by Dupont, and PERT (Program Evolution
and Review Technique, 1958), by the Office of Special Projects US Navy. The
PERT method was intended for the implementation of industrial projects and the
CPM for military projects linked to the space race. From the combination of the
two techniques came the PERT-CPM technique.
CPM
(Critical Path Method), on the other hand, is the result of studies in an area
of the operational research that has been called "flows in graphics",
and that has received dissemination, by mathematical affinity, as a topic allied
to linear programming. Studies in CPM began around 1956 by J.E. Kelley for
DuPont and were completed with the model developed by Ford and Fulkerson for
the Rand Corporation.
In
the PERT system, the deadlines for completing the tasks are treated probabilistically
while in the CPM system the deadlines for performing the tasks are treated in a
deterministic manner. As the methods were used, the characteristics that
previously distinguished them were incorporated from one method to another, so
that, due to this integration today, these methods are known as the PERT/CPM
system (PEINADO; GRAEML, 2007).
In
consonance with Miranda et al. (2003), in the PERT/CPM, a project can be
visualized as a set of operations conducted in a certain sequence to reach some
goals. Once activities have been identified, they can be represented and
ordered in a Network Diagram. The PERT/CPM technique can be used in conjunction
with a multicriteria decision support methodology, incorporating the critical
aspects of the projects and, in this way, allowing a more realistic treatment
of the problem. In this case, the project's critical activities are determined
so that the manager can concentrate his efforts on the control and monitoring
of these activities with a bigger chance of presenting problems during
execution.
2.2.2. Gantt
The Gantt chart is a tool developed
by the North American Henry L. Gantt in 1917. It is a graph of matrix form of
the activities of the project and a time line where, for each task is assigned
a length bar proportional to the time of the duration of the task. The Gantt
chart is now used in project control due to its ease and excellent visual
communication (PEINADO; GRAEML, 2007).
3. METHODOLOGY
Conducting a survey assumes a series of
decision-making at the beginning and in the course of the research, that are
related to the way in which data and theory will be used to meet the empirical
and objective characteristics of science (COELHO, 2004).
The methodological approach is the applied case study,
using participant observation and semi-structured interview with the
entrepreneur.
Acoording
to Yin (2013), a case study is an empirical investigation that investigates a
contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the
boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly defined.
The case
study has different purposes, one of them, it is explore real life situations
and the object of studied is unique, but one of the objections is the
difficulty of generalizing the results of the study (GIL, 2002).
In the
first stage, a meeting with the centre managers was held to analyze and meet the real needs of the company, in
order to understand the priorities of the buildings and the order of execution
of the project. For this purpose, the meeting was elaborated by the Design
Thinking method.
Mota et
al. (2015) defines how a user-centered approach, established from a cyclical
perspective, divided into three big steps. Inspiration: when research is
motivated in the search for solutions; Ideation: to generate, make and test the
ideas and solutions identified; Implementation: raises the perception of the
market and realizes the commercial and industrial implementation; also enables
the start of a new development cycle. At this stage it was still possible to define
the research question.
The
second stage, after knowing that the real problem was the difficulty in
organizing a schedule, some bibliographical researches were done on sustainable
schools, permaculture and bioconstruction, social entrepreneurship and types of
schedules more used in the construction organization, among them PERT and CPM,
Gantt Diagram and the BIM System, which composed the theoretical reference of
this research project. Then, the results of this theoretical research were
presented to the company for discussion and validation.
The third
step was to prepare a list in order of execution of the works; this list was
organized according to the priorities of the entrepreneur.
In the
fourth stage, the scheduling techniques, Gantt, PERT and the BIM System were
analyzed.
The fifth
step was elaborated in a practical way, by the application of the scheduling
techniques. Initially, the list of structures was transformed into a PERT/CPM
diagram, it is worth mentioning that the lead time of each structure is based
on events, since the construction process takes place through groups of
volunteers, courses and workshops.
4. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
The
property analyzed has an area of 20,200 m² that was used in the production and
sale of ornamental plants in Pindorama (Rural Zone of Mogi das Cruzes, SP), an
excellent location, with an asphalted road connected to the Engenheiro Cândido
do Rêgo Chaves Highway, SP-39, Rota do Caminho do Mar.
The
owners of the property worked for twenty-three years as producers of ornamental
plants, being permission holders in the Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns
Gerais de São Paulo (CEAGESP).
CEAGESP
is a government warehouse for marketing between producers and traders of
products like vegetables, fruits, flowers and grains. They rent two sale shops,
one in the night market, from 10 pm to midnight, on Mondays and Thursdays and
the other one in the early morning market from 02:00 am to 10:00 am on Tuesday
and Friday.
However,
the long distance from this site and the mentioned market place, 80 km, and
considering to cost of transport, maintenance of the vehicle, the high rent
cost of the shops and poor quality of life were the causes that make them give
up selling at CEAGESP eight years ago. In this period, in which Mr. Francisco sold
at CEAGESP, lacked time to produce and sell with dedication. Currently, the
commercialization of the production is made only on the croft.
On the other hand, the school centre, which operates
since 2012, was idealized by young friends who seek to create a sustainable
school. Focusing on the idea of creating a space to receive children and adults
who may actually have contact with the land, in this way, the idea of a school
being totally sustainable.
The process of creation of the sustainable school occurs
in a gradual way, with courses of bioconstruction for the sustainable
construction preserving the environment, teacher training courses for the
vegetable garden project, volunteers’ group experiences to complete the school
works.
The first course was held in March 2016, in
partnership with the Institute of Permaculture and Ecovilas da Mata Atlântica
(IPEMA), when construction of a dry ecological toilet was started, with the
construction technique with raw soil - COB, a technique of construction with earth
that allows to use a lot of creativity and freedom, since it consists of going
to shape the house like a great sculpture. After this construction, other
structures were started, such as a wooden pallet kiosk and a greenhouse made of
treated bamboo.
Broadly speaking, the school would focus on
sustainability, a space where people have the opportunity to learn how to deal
with a vegetable garden and practice it, have direct contact with the land and
nature, which stimulates the consumption and production of healthy foods and
approaching permaculture and, eventually, learning sustainable building
techniques.
From the construction of the physical structure to the
cleaning and management of environmental resources, there is concern for the
environment and the well-being of all involved. All activities of the school
will be directed to all people involved in order to develop collective daily
attitudes related to sustainability and respect, both with colleagues and the
environment, as well as to arouse interest in environmental projects.
4.1.
School
deployment schedule
In order to carry out the
construction of the Sustainable School, a schedule (table 1) was drawn up in
order to monitor the evolution of the works. Based on this schedule, it will be
set the calendar of activities to continue the construction, which activities
will occur in parallel. At the outset, the estimated completion of the works
was December 2018, but the activities of the sustainable school may begin
before this deadline, once the main structures are ready and the site has been
legally approved for operation.
Table 1:
Construction schedule
|
Activity |
Description |
Previous |
Lead Time |
|
A |
Toilet construction |
- |
10 |
|
B |
Vegetable garden |
- |
4 |
|
C |
Wooden kiosk |
A |
4 |
|
D |
Greenhouse |
B |
4 |
|
E |
Vivarium |
D |
4 |
|
F |
Agroforestry planting |
B |
4 |
|
G |
Toilets |
C |
2 |
|
H |
Trail |
E |
4 |
|
I |
Bicycle park |
H |
4 |
|
J |
Treehouse |
G |
8 |
|
K |
Camping |
F |
2 |
|
L |
Canebreak |
K |
2 |
|
M |
Picnic |
L |
2 |
|
N |
Headquarters |
J |
15 |
|
O |
LAB |
M |
15 |
|
P |
Party room |
A |
40 |
|
Q |
Classrooms |
A |
40 |
|
R |
Three little pig’s house |
I |
8 |
|
S |
Gazebo |
R |
8 |
|
T |
Carps tanks |
S |
6 |
Source: the authors, 2017
For better visualization, the Gantt Chart (figure 1) was
used, which aims to illustrate the progress of different stages of a project,
since it visually organizes the tasks and deadlines that must be fulfilled,
according to the Diagram below, provided by the company.
Figure 1: Gantt chart
Source:
the authors, 2017
Below,
the development of the PERT/CPM Diagram (figure 2) applied to the company is
showed. This diagram was prepared by the author according to the data provided
by the entrepreneur.
Figure 2: Gantt
chart
Source:
the authors, 2017
5. CONCLUSION
Gantt and PERT/CPM diagrams were analyzed with the
entrepreneur. It was agreed that for the Gantt diagram there is a need to apply
the PERT/CPM method, since it calculates the initial and final dates of the
activities, and they depend on each other. The Gantt diagram, without the other
systems, has only the function of distributing the average execution time of
the tasks, so that the PERT/CPM result can be applied directly to the Gantt
diagram.
In addition to indicating the critical path, PERT/CPM
allow the project to be easily visualized and allow the user to choose another
path where there is more free time between the execution of the tasks,
prompting the need for the exchange sequence of activities if it is necessary.
In view of this research, the PERT/CPM, as expected,
met the demands of the company, where the diagram elaborated without the
necessity of a great theoretical repertoire on the part of the entrepreneurs.
It was immediate used; it was applied to the calendar of the company's
activities, making it possible to estimate the total and partial dead line of
the work and its stages, which was impossible for administrators to do without
adequate methodologies.
It was proposed to the company, to encourage the
establishment of dates to start the activities and to send the reminders of
these dates and execution deadlines, directly to the e-mails, schedules and
calendars of the coordinators of each nucleus, which are responsible for the
execution of the works of each activity, leading the process of creating a
sustainable educational center to the success.
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