Paula, Nathália de (2016) Design firms management and environmental sustainability of buildings. PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil.
Abstract
Design is an important stage of the project in the Buildings subsector, because it is the time when many decisions may be taken about its performance and construction. For this reason, this stage is strategic in relation to environmental sustainability. The aim of this thesis is to propose management guidelines for design firms focused on meeting environmental requirements in building design. Three research stages were conducted to achieve this purpose. Stage 1 focuses on the practices diagnosis of some firms operating in the market: building design firms and consulting firms in environmental sustainability. The methods used at this stage are action-research, questionnaire and exploratory research. In Stage 2, three case studies involving design firms from São Paulo were carried out in order to analyze their management focusing on environmental sustainability. At Stage 3, a survey research was performed in order to more broadly investigate if environmental sustainability is considered in the firms' management processes. The main results of the studies show that there are external and internal factors that influence the firms' reaction faced with market or society demands; the consideration of the environmental sustainability by design firms brought changes to their management processes. The proposition of management guidelines for design firms focused on meeting environmental requirements in building design is founded on these results and on the literature. Management provides a more favorable environment to the concepts of sustainability, durability and performance.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Melhado, Silvio Burrattino |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | civil construction; design; firm; management; requirements |
| Index terms: | society, survey, questionnaire, environmental sustainability, case study, design firm, building design, durability, exploratory research |
| Subjects: | architectural design, practitioner, communities and social development, research methods, health safety and environment, material degradation and durability, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Health and Safety, Design Practice, Roles and Professions, Stakeholder Management, Research Practice, Construction Materials |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here