Justification

The construction industry has a broad impact on Brazilian economy and in recent decades it has witnessed the development of various types of new management techniques, production models and production techniques. At first it was believed that these new techniques could not be applied to real construction because its characteristics differed from the manufacturing industry.

In this context, a new production philosophy entitled lean production was brought up. It aims at carrying out activities with the least amount of resources (human, financial, and time, for example), in order to reduce waste. Later, this philosophy was adapted to the construction sector and called lean construction. This new model encourages companies to make a full analysis of different areas involved in the construction process. It is also seen as a new way of not only approaching production, but the business, thus involving other stages of development such as product development, relationship with suppliers, sales and people management.

In 2004, CONENX (International Seminar on Lean Construction) was held in Fortaleza and it aroused the interest of some companies on the lean philosophy. As a matter of fact, these companies actually started the deployment of this philosophy. The direct consequences on academia were: several courses on lean construction were designed and taught, with short or medium length; research on the subject began to be developed at the University, and classes on lean construction became mandatory on the Civil Engineering major at the Federal University of Ceará.

The result of these efforts was that several papers were published in scientific journals and the academic events as the IGLC were created to exchange ideas and information. Afterwards, four editions of the CONENX occurred. It set up a “cultural soup” and Ceará became one of the world references in the application of this philosophy. For this reason, Ceará now has the opportunity to host the IGLC2013, being projected worldwide as a construction engineering center.