Development of a tool for technical damage and risk assessment in construction

The Spanish building construction and rehabilitation sector is regulated by the Law on Building Ordinance (Ley de Ordenación de la Edificación –LOE-) and the Building Technical Code (Código Técnico de la Edificación -CTE-). The former was enacted to protect users interests and it establishes the obligations of the agents that participate in the building process so that their responsibilities and guaranties are specified. The latter, translates the basic requirements of the LOE into technical objectives, defining the requirements to be fulfilled by buildings. With the entry into force of the LOE, the ten-year warranty is the only one that has been materialized through the hiring of a ten-year insurance. Since 2016, various meetings have taken place among the different agents involved in the construction sector, the Ministry of Development (Area of architecture, housing and soil), and representatives of political parties from the parliament, in order to study the opportunity of the compulsory subscription of three-year guarantees. Nevertheless, it still has not had a specific answer from insurers mainly due to the lack of definition of the extension of “damage” and uncertainty in the quantification of the risk. This paper presents the development of a tool that will allow to assess technical damages along the building process and manage technical risks by the implementation of a sustainable and continuous improvement to ensure adequate response (technically and economically) of the building agents to end users, in line with the guarantees required by law. The methodology identifies existing constructive typologies for every building components and their common pathologies, establishing their origin and the corresponding law compliance breaches. Then, an objective criterion to identify, assess and manage existing risk is presented.