Plumbing System’s Pathologies Based on the Record of Technical Assistance and Design Procedures

Abstract

During many years, plumbing system has been the leader at the list of technical assistance complaining. Many factors may cause these problems: weak design, uncontrolled execution, materials or inappropriate use of the sanitary fixtures. By analysing the technical assistance records, it is quite hard to verify which problems are related to flawed construction procedures. That way, this paper intends to establish a routine to analyse those records, identifying those related to weak design of the plumbing system and improving its process that may have been causing some defects. To do that, all the complaining records of a construction company of the city of Goiania were analysed and classified to the most probable cause of it. In parallel, plumbing system design of three buildings was analysed and verified all the nonconformities of the Brazilian standards that can cause pathologies at this system. Once identified, all the nonconformities were compared with records of the technical assistance. The results showed that most of the problems related to the technical assistance were really happening due to inappropriate execution, but the weak plumbing design contributes to a high percentage of the problems. Some of the problems are caused by the lack of commitment to the Brazilian standard procedures or the poor details. We expected to help the learning process that can be withdraw from the technical assistance complaining, improving the product that the company delivers.