The industrialization of civil construction in Brazil is no longer a distant promise and is now hampered less by the sector’s productive capacity and more by regulatory, bureaucratic and coordination obstacles between the different levels of government. This was the main message of the panel “Industrialization and productivity in construction”, held this Thursday (26) at , with mediation by Luiz França, president of ABRAINC, and participation by Eduardo Fischer, director-president of MRV , the minister of Cities, Vladimir Lima, and Yorki Estefan, president of SindusCon-SP.
When opening the sector’s diagnosis, Fischer said that housing construction is currently experiencing a much higher stage of maturity and sophistication than a decade ago, but faces bottlenecks that prevent a stronger leap in scale. “The installed capacity to produce social housing in Brazil has never been so high and sophisticated,” he stated. For him, the main sticking point is in the lack of standardization between municipalitieswhich limits the advancement of industrialized systems and reduces the efficiency of investments.
“Imagine if BYD had to make a different car for each city in Brazil”, asked Fischer.
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According to the MRV executive, the adoption of more standardized models could generate a significant drop in costs. “Standardization tends to bring us somewhere between 15% and 20% direct cost reduction in the process,” he said. Fischer argued that, without more uniform rules for urban typologies and approvals, industrialization advances more slowly than it could, even with the gains brought by the tax reform by allowing credit in industrialized processes. “Without standardization, the emergence of this industrialized process seems very slow. It may not even emerge to its full potential, because it is not standard. The issue of standardization is extremely fundamental,” he stated.
In Fischer’s assessment, the effect of this movement could go beyond company productivity and reach the design of housing policies themselves. “My House My Life is already the largest housing program in the world and it can put Brazil at the forefront of producing social housing units in the world, if we manage to make this move,” he said.
On the government side, Vladimir Lima, Minister of Cities, reinforced that the industrialization agenda also depends on professional training and institutional articulation to move beyond discourse and into practice. “When we think about industrialization, it requires a trained professional”, he stated. According to Lima, the ministry already has instruments to support this transition and can incorporate the topic into ongoing discussions with the sector. “We already have the entire system to make these courses a reality and we can, indeed, encourage this partnership,” he said.
The minister also signaled his willingness to maintain adjustments as the scenario changes, especially in costs and financing.
When responding to a public appeal from businessman Ronaldo Cury, director of Investor Relations at Cury Construtora, for new adjustments to the program, Vladimir Lima said that the model needs to be treated as a dynamic policy. And he added: “We have always been willing to talk.”
For Lima, there is no structural funding restriction for the program. “There will be no shortage of resources,” he said, citing sources such as FGTS, Social Fund and SBPE. According to the minister, the focus now is to unlock execution, expand hiring and align the Union, states and municipalities so that supply keeps up with demand.
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Yorki Estefan brought to the debate concrete examples of how local regulation still prevents productivity gains at the end. For the president of SindusCon-SP, industrialization is no longer just a modernization agenda, but a necessity for survival in a sector pressured by shortages and aging of the workforce. “A company that is not competitive will simply leave the market,” he stated.
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Estefan quoted restrictions on crane operation and cargo transportation in São Paulo as examples of urban norms that hinder the wider adoption of industrialized solutions. “It’s as if you told a businessman to run, but his legs and arms were tied,” he said. In his view, progress depends on a joint effort between the private sector and public authorities, with a review of rules that currently make the process more expensive, slower and less efficient.
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