The Civil Construction Sector in the Municipality of Livramento de Nossa Senhora-BA

general insights and the impact generated by COVID-19

Abstract

In most small-scale constructions, especially in the smallest cities in Brazil, there is a predominance of informality in civil construction work, both for reasons of hiring workers and the lack of adequate technical support. In addition, it is known that the type of hiring, whether daily or on a contract basis, may influence the development of the constructive stages, as it can lead to an acceleration of executive processes. With this in mind, this paper aims to assess whether, in the opinion of civil construction workers in the municipality of Livramento de Nossa Senhora-BA, the pandemic has brought some kind of change in the sector's dynamics, especially with regard to the increased demand for professionals. It was also sought to understand whether there is a preference for the payment system (daily or contracted) and whether these modalities generate differences in the way professionals perform the work, reflecting on the possible impacts on the final quality of buildings. For this, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 15 civil construction workers, in different works, whether they were masons or servants. Thus, the questions met the objectives of this work, as the responses of the interviewees showed that there was an increase in demands for activities by workers in the municipality during the pandemic. Thus, most interviewees stated that they preferred to work in the contract model, ensuring a dynamic acceleration of work demand processes. Therefore, it can be inferred that through the answers of this group of interviewees, some works in the municipality may suffer from a poor performance in their quality in front of a contracted service.