Timber Construction Regulations in Brazil: A Perspective from Its National Industry of Timber Houses

Abstract

Codes of practices and standards for products and activities are available regulations for global sectors, although they are dedicated to national scopes such as civil construction in Brazil. These regulations align with industry compliance as they establish mandatory or voluntary issues. Brazilian developers must properly regard construction regulations, which mostly dedicated to concrete and steel buildings but rarely to timber buildings. Through construction regulations, the production of timber buildings can become more standardized and scalable to ensure the steady quality of finished products. From this perspective, this paper evaluated Brazil’s timber housing production sector’s utilization and access to procedures, standards, guidelines, certifications, and seals. A standardized questionnaire was designed and refined to analyze this local perspective. Face-to-face interviews with sampled companies were conducted using a randomized sampling procedure. The margin of error was obtained using significant sampling of this sector. The findings evinced that most Brazilian developers underuse timber building regulations in their production and management practices and still need to familiarize themselves with this important subject. The codes must establish requirements for each timber construction technique to represent different technologies and also specify particularities and added performances to suit varied projects.