Time and cost overrun in public projects

Abstract

Investments in education made by the Brazilian Federal Government between the years of 2004 and 2014 reached a significant amount of 94.2 billion Brazilian reais, of which almost 7 billion went to projects at federal higher education institutions. It should be noted that in this sector there are frequent additions of time and cost, and they can be considered as one of the major problems in the execution of these works. From the invested amount, around 637 million represented cost additives, showing the problem to be faced in this area. The study’s data include 2,178 works divided into all five regions of the country. Statistical techniques such as the Kruskal-Wallis Analysis of Variance and the Mann-Whitney U Test were used for data analysis and inference. The main factors that led to the celebration of additives were the inclusions and/or modifications of design as well as the addition of services. It was found that 69.05% of the works in the sector did not meet the deadline and 61.89% did not end within the expected cost. Hence, this study contributes to the evaluation of the public education sector works at a national level, allowing the generated information to serve for more efficient management of this construction sub-sector.

Keywords:
Public projects; Civil construction; Cost; Deadline; Analyses of variance