METHOD FOR DIAGNOSING THE MATURITY LEVEL OF MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION FEDERAL INSTITUTIONS IN BRAZIL - A CASE STUDY IN UFRN
Physical assets; maintenance management; maturity level; higher education federal institutions.
Physical assets in a federal public university, as well as in industry, play an essential role in fulfilling the core activities of these organizations. In Brazil, between 2003 and 2014, the Federal Government made large investments in infrastructure in public higher education through several expansion programs with the construction of new campuses and the expansion of existing ones. However, from mid-2014 to the present, the country faces a severe economic crisis that led to the approval of a constitutional amendment that limits public spending for up to twenty years. As a result of these two consecutive and opposite scenarios, the country now has a large inventory of new and old physical assets in federal public universities, but with limited resources to properly perform maintenance services, which are necessary for these assets to perform their duties functions required satisfactorily. Inserted in this broad context that inclines to the scrapping of physical assets in federal universities over the years, this research presents a method to diagnose the maturity level of physical asset maintenance management in a federal higher education institution. To achieve this goal, a single case study was conducted at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, supported by triangulation of data from multiple sources, using two form models, participant observation and document investigation. As a result, the maintenance management maturity obtained, according to the manager responsible for the maintenance department of the institution studied, a very low level compared to the expected, which was reinforced by the triangulation of data used in the research.