Enhancing the sustainability of public works has been a key agenda in recent years for many governmental organizations. Public works contribute significantly to a large portion of engineering works and have great potential to impact the sustainability of cities. Thus, evaluating the sustainability of these projects is highly relevant, mainly regarding their impacts on environmental, social, and economic aspects. There are currently assessment systems and methods with different scopes and approaches. Yet, there remains uncertainty when it comes to considering public works’ sustainability and how useful criteria can be incorporated into the proposed assessment tasks to ensure such a goal. This study contributes to filling this gap by developing, through an extensive and detailed bibliographic research, a flexible and comprehensive framework composed of 214 criteria distributed across nine categories that measure the degree of sustainability of public works, with emphasis on economic, social and environmental goals. The proposed framework can act as a practical tool, functioning as a checklist applicable to all types of public construction works, and at any stage of the lifecycle. Evaluation of the framework by professionals indicated its suitability when encompassing sustainability objectives, its viability, and its ease of use.

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Desperdício e perdas na construção

This article discusses the scope of the constitutional due process clause in Brazilian administrative law, based on an analysis of the Brazilian Constitution, the Fifth (1791) and Fourteenth (1868) Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the European and Inter-American human rights systems. The author concludes that since the due process clause (Brazilian Constitution Article 5.54, namely, “no one shall be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law”) was inspired by the U.S. Constitution, Brazilian legislators should exercise their powers of discretion in policy-making to adapt the clause to the realities of the Brazilian administrative authorities and to the experience of the quasi-independent authorities that perform the adjudicative function under U.S. administrative law.