Building Regulations and Existing Buildings: Setting the Requirements on Structural Safety in Portugal

This paper deals with the application of building regulations to the rehabilitation of existing buildings, taking a recent Government initiative to deregulate construction works in existing buildings as a case-study. To contextualize the analysis, the Portuguese housing stock is briefly described and the way building regulations apply to existing buildings in Portugal is reviewed. The deregulation initiative was presented by the Portuguese Government as a pragmatic policy measure to stimulate urban rehabilitation but sparkled wide opposition from a number of professional and scientific associations, who questioned both its strategic sense and its technical convenience. The structural safety professional and scientific community was particularly active in this debate. Focusing on them, the analysis of the process shows that: (i) the opposing positions were founded on two equally reasonable priorities (i.e., to stimulate the rehabilitation of existing building stock versus to improve structural safety), (ii) both parties were unable to support their positions with hard facts and argued mostly around their respective priorities and (iii) the debate ended in a deadlock. Main conclusions are that to overcome the deadlock more applied research is needed to bring forward appropriate solutions to rehabilitate existing buildings, along with a better dissemination of this practical knowledge in the building and real estate sectors. An informed and enlightened debate involving all relevant stakeholders, including the consumers' associations and the public, should also be actively pursued. A final important conclusion is that increased attention should be given to sustainability and resilience when accessing social and economic efficiency in the process of designing and updating building regulations. Conducting these processes in the future will require a broader and more comprehensive approach and a more extended reference time frame that have often been adopted in the past.