Stalled Public Works in Brazil: Updated TCU Map

Updated map of stalled public works in Brazil based on TCU data: quantities, most affected sectors, critical states, causes, and how to prioritize resumption.

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Stalled public works in Brazil remain one of the country’s largest infrastructure and public-policy liabilities. The latest clearly published nationwide quantitative consolidation by the Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU), with data cut off in April 2025 and released on July 30, 2025, identified 22,621 projects financed with federal resources, of which 11,469 were stalled — 50.7% of the portfolio. Education and healthcare accounted for 70% of the stalled projects, with 8,053 unfinished projects in those two sectors. In June 2026, when announcing a new phase of the Destrava program and a new monitoring dashboard, the TCU again placed the scale of the problem at approximately 22 thousand projects, of which about 11 thousand remained stalled.

These figures should not be read as a simple delay statistic. A stalled public work represents immobilized public capital, an asset exposed to deterioration, an unmet public need, risk of design and permit expiration, higher resumption costs, and often a new procurement cycle. Proper interpretation of the TCU map requires separating number of projects, financial value, project type, physical progress, cause of interruption, and institutional capacity to resume execution. The same stall rate can conceal very different situations: an almost completed daycare center that was abandoned, a primary healthcare unit blocked by a land issue, a sanitation project without a mature Detailed Engineering Design Package, or a road project whose contract became economically unviable.

For this reason, the national diagnosis is useful to public managers only when converted into engineering questions: which projects should be resumed first, which require a condition survey, which designs need revision, which contracts can still be remedied, which remaining works require new procurement, and which projects no longer make technical, economic, or operational sense.

What the latest TCU data actually show

The update released by the TCU in July 2025, with data consolidated through April of that year, is the most precise nationwide reference identified for quantifying the portfolio. The dashboard mapped 22,621 projects financed with federal resources and classified 11,469 as stalled. This means that, at that cutoff date, slightly more than one project in every two was not progressing normally.

The financial dimension is also significant. Monitoring materials from the Court itself pointed to tens of billions of reais in planned investments associated with stalled projects and amounts already disbursed into assets that were not yet fully delivering the intended public service. The problem, therefore, is not only the amount required to complete the remaining work. There is also the economic cost of keeping invested resources from generating benefits, in addition to physical deterioration and rework.

In June 2026, during the launch of a new phase of the Integrated Program for Resumption of Public Works, the TCU reported that it was monitoring around 22 thousand projects and that approximately 11 thousand remained stalled. The statement is important because it indicates that, even with resumption programs and sector-specific efforts, the national backlog remained in the same order of magnitude. The Court again highlighted that approximately 70% of discontinued projects were in education and healthcare.

There is an important methodological distinction between saying that the TCU released new consolidated nationwide figures and saying that, in 2026, the Court reiterated the scale of the problem. As of the date of this analysis, the detailed and publicly documented quantitative base identified remains the dataset with an April 2025 cutoff. In technical content, this distinction avoids mixing publication date, data-reference date, and later update statements.

For public managers, the practical consequence is straightforward: the national dashboard should guide prioritization and benchmarking, but a decision on a specific project requires its own baseline, updated in the field and reconciled with the documentation.

Education and healthcare account for most stalled public works

According to the TCU, education and healthcare together accounted for 8,053 stalled projects at the April 2025 cutoff, equivalent to approximately 70% of the nationwide total. This helps explain why unfinished public works have a disproportionate social impact.

An unfinished school or daycare center is not merely an incomplete real-estate asset. It represents places that were never made available, the need to travel to other facilities, continued use of temporary structures, and lost service capacity. In healthcare, an unfinished primary healthcare unit, hospital, laboratory, or specialized facility directly affects service coverage and may leave the population dependent on more distant or overloaded facilities.

In June 2026, the TCU’s own communications reinforced this priority. The Destrava II Program began concentrating efforts specifically on education and healthcare. At the time, the Ministry of Health reported identifying 5.6 thousand discontinued projects in its area, with approximately 65% still awaiting resumption. The Ministry of Education reported having identified 5.6 thousand stalled projects under the current administration, of which 3.7 thousand had been resumed and more than 700 completed, leaving about 1.8 thousand without progress.

These sector-specific figures should not be mechanically added to the national dashboard because they may use different universes, cutoff dates, and classification criteria. Their analytical value lies in confirming the same conclusion through different sources: healthcare and education form the largest and most socially sensitive core of the stalled-public-works backlog.

Why education and healthcare projects have specific risks

Projects in these sectors combine several characteristics that increase the sensitivity of resumption:

strong dependence on transfers and intergovernmental agreements;
large numbers of small and medium municipal projects;
need to coordinate architecture, building systems, and operational requirements;
equipment and systems that may change during long periods of interruption;
health, accessibility, fire-protection, and permitting requirements;
need for staffing, operating funding, and maintenance after physical completion;
risk that a standardized design does not fully match the actual site or facility conditions.

In many cases, the physical construction is only part of the problem. A facility may be nearly complete and still not be ready to enter operation. This is why the operational readiness of a public facility must be assessed separately from the physical percentage completed.

Maranhão, Bahia, Pará, and Minas Gerais are among the states with the largest backlog

In its July 2025 release, the TCU highlighted Maranhão, Bahia, Pará, and Minas Gerais. Together, these four states accounted for nearly four thousand unfinished projects within the monitored universe.

This does not mean that all projects had the same cause of interruption or that responsibility was exclusively at the state level. The dashboard includes projects financed with federal resources and executed under different institutional arrangements. A single state may contain directly federal, state, municipal, agreement-funded, or sector-program projects.

For territorial analysis, three perspectives are more useful than the raw ranking:

absolute number of stalled projects;
percentage of stalled projects relative to the local portfolio;
value and functional relevance of the affected projects.

A state with many small municipal projects may lead in quantity without necessarily concentrating the highest financial value. Another may have fewer projects, but they may be large and have major economic impact. Resumption prioritization should combine these dimensions.

Institutional capacity must also be considered. Smaller municipalities may struggle to revise designs, update estimates, conduct a new procurement, inspect contracts, and structure resumption documentation. The bottleneck then ceases to be purely financial and becomes an engineering and governance issue.

The most concerning finding: recent projects also stall

The TCU highlighted that the problem is not limited to old contracts. Of the 5,505 projects started between April 2024 and April 2025, approximately 1,200 were already stalled at the analyzed cutoff, about 22% of the total.

This indicator is particularly relevant because it weakens the explanation that the backlog is merely a legacy of older procurement models, Law 8,666, or historical crises. A significant share of newly started projects also enter a stalled condition rapidly.

When a recent project stops after only a few months, the investigation should begin before the construction site. Recurring technical hypotheses include:

an insufficiently mature Basic Engineering Design Package;
inconsistent quantities;
a reference estimate that does not represent actual market conditions;
failure to release the work area;
incomplete permits and authorizations;
unrecorded interferences;
a schedule incompatible with the construction method or logistics;
contracting an economically unviable bid;
poor risk allocation;
insufficient contractor capability;
payment flow or counterpart funding incompatible with execution;
inspection governance unable to respond quickly to deviations.

The article Why public works stop before they even begin examines the portion of this risk that originates in studies, design, and procurement. The data on recent projects show that addressing only the old backlog does not solve the flow of new interruptions.

A stalled public work is not a single technical category

The national dashboard must transform thousands of different records into comparable categories. This is essential for portfolio management. To decide the future of a specific project, however, the generic classification “stalled” is insufficient.

A project may be inactive because the contract was terminated, because the contractor abandoned the site, due to a court decision, lack of funding, environmental restrictions, expropriation, design failure, the need for a contract amendment, measurement disputes, contractor insolvency, or a combination of factors.

The consequence is that there is no resumption protocol based only on the stated cause. Before remobilizing, the manager must establish the asset’s current condition and reconstruct the contractual and physical baseline.

Five questions the dashboard cannot answer by itself

For each project, the decision requires answering at least five questions:

What was actually executed? The financial percentage paid does not necessarily equal a valid physical completion percentage.
What remains technically usable? Executed elements may have deteriorated or may no longer be compatible with the updated design.
What remains to be executed? Remaining work must be measured from the current condition, not merely by subtracting from the original estimate.
What was the root cause of the interruption? Resuming without removing the original constraint creates another interruption.
What is the appropriate contractual route? Continuation, remediation, termination, calling the next eligible bidder for the remaining scope, or a new procurement depend on the specific situation and the competent administrative decision.

The technical protocol for resuming a stalled public work organizes these questions into an operational sequence of diagnosis, decision, and remobilization.

The physical completion percentage can be misleading

One of the most dangerous distortions in managing stalled public works is treating “80% executed” as synonymous with “20% remains.” This arithmetic logic is rarely sufficient.

Imagine a building with its structure and enclosure complete, systems partially installed, equipment stored for years, a leaking roof, and incomplete As-Built documentation. The financial report may show 80% progress, but the portion that can actually be reused may be smaller. Some executed work may require inspection, testing, correction, or replacement.

Resumption needs to distinguish at least four measures:

Measure	What it represents	Risk if used in isolation
Measured percentage	services recognized in measurement reports	may include items whose current condition has not been validated
Paid percentage	cumulative disbursement	does not prove quality or usability
Apparent physical percentage	visibly executed volume	may conceal defects and untested systems
Technically usable percentage	portion that can be incorporated into the final solution	requires inspection, documentation, and acceptance criteria

This is why the survey of executed work and condition report is one of the most important documents before defining the remaining scope.

The cause of the interruption should be treated as a system problem

A public work usually does not stop because of a single isolated event. Even when there is an obvious trigger — contractor abandonment, lack of payment, or a court decision — it is necessary to investigate why the contractual system failed to absorb the problem before it reached a complete interruption.

A robust cause analysis separates the event, immediate cause, contributing cause, and systemic cause. For example:

event: the contractor reduces crews and abandons the site;
immediate cause: insufficient cash flow;
contributing cause: a bid margin incompatible with actual productivity;
systemic cause: insufficient feasibility analysis and an inadequate risk matrix.

Or:

event: the project is interrupted because the planned foundations cannot be executed;
immediate cause: geotechnical conditions differ from those assumed;
contributing cause: insufficient subsurface investigation;
systemic cause: a Basic Engineering Design Package was tendered without the survey required to size the solution.

The advantage of this approach is that it avoids “solving” only the event. Replacing the contractor without correcting the design, budget, or work-area release can reproduce exactly the same failure.

Design, budget, and site form the critical triangle for resumption

Three elements recur in stalled public works: technical definition of the scope, the economic baseline, and effective availability of the work front.

Design

The design needs to represent actual conditions and be sufficiently mature to define what will be procured. In an interrupted project, the original design may be outdated because standards changed, materials were discontinued, interferences were discovered, or the building itself changed during the interruption.

When resumption requires a new procurement, repeating the old package without revision tends to transfer the same defects into the new contract. The article Public work without a Detailed Engineering Design Package? What Law 14,133 requires before starting explains the relationship between the Basic Engineering Design Package, Detailed Engineering Design Package, and start of execution.

Budget

The estimate for the remaining work must reflect the current solution. It is not enough to apply monetary adjustment to the original spreadsheet. Quantities change, mobilization must be rebuilt, temporary works reappear, repairs enter the scope, productivity may decrease in a brownfield environment, and testing, documentation, and commissioning costs may become more relevant.

The price research for engineering works and services and the detailed estimate composition must be rebuilt using current bases and explicit assumptions.

Site and released work front

Expropriation, easements, environmental permitting, interferences, and physical access are production conditions. If the contractor does not receive an effectively released work front, the schedule becomes fictional.

The allocation of expropriation and permitting risks must be addressed before contracting, not after the construction site has already been mobilized.

How to prioritize a portfolio of dozens or hundreds of stalled public works

A portfolio of stalled public works should not be treated merely as a list of problematic contracts. Technical Due Diligence organizes physical condition, documentation, risks, cost to complete, and priorities to turn the backlog into executable decisions.

Structure a technical diagnosis of the public-works portfolio

The TCU dashboard helps visualize the national problem, but each public entity must build its own prioritization. Resuming the project with the highest percentage executed first is not always the best decision. A project that is 90% complete may still require a large additional investment to deliver benefit, while another at 60% may be placed into operation quickly and serve a larger population.

A prioritization matrix should combine at least:

social relevance and population served;
urgency of the public policy;
technically usable percentage;
estimated cost to complete;
time to enter operation;
risk of deterioration if the project remains stalled;
availability of design and permits;
land status;
complexity of the new procurement;
legal and contractual risk;
availability of a budget source;
future operation and maintenance capability.

The decision can be organized into action categories:

immediate resumption, when the scope, funding, and work front are mature;
conditional resumption, when solvable issues must be closed before mobilization;
reformulation, when design, scope, or purpose needs revision;
new procurement for remaining work, when the previous contract cannot continue and the remaining scope is defined;
justified discontinuation, when resumption is no longer technically, economically, or socially rational.

This last option is often ignored. Responsible portfolio management does not mean completing every project at any cost. It means demonstrating which decision produces the greatest public benefit given the project’s current condition.

Remaining work is not the financial balance of the previous contract

The new mobilization must start from an estimate rebuilt for the actual remaining work. Quantities, repairs, mobilization, productivity, tests, and documentation must reflect the project’s current condition, not merely the historical spreadsheet.

Recalculate the technical estimate for the remaining work

When the previous contract ends, it is common to treat the difference between the contracted amount and the amount paid as the “balance of the project.” Technically, this is insufficient.

The remaining work is the current set of services, corrections, completions, tests, documentation, and deliverables required to produce the final result. It must be reconstructed from the actual survey and design review.

This means there may be:

services originally planned but not yet executed;
services executed but rejected or deteriorated;
repairs resulting from exposure during the interruption;
new standards-compliance adaptations;
disassembly and reinstatement required to access existing elements;
updates to systems and equipment;
new tests and commissioning;
final documentation and As-Built;
mobilization and demobilization of the new contractor.

The article Remaining public work: how to procure what is left without inheriting the problems of the previous contract examines this reconstruction of the scope in greater depth.

Resuming without commissioning may only replace a stalled project with an asset that does not work

Institutional pressure often focuses on physically completing the project. This is understandable, but it creates another risk: declaring the project complete without demonstrating that the systems operate in an integrated manner, that requirements have been met, and that the receiving team is able to take over the asset.

Especially in hospitals, schools, administrative buildings, sanitation, energy, electronic security, and critical facilities, handover must include tests and evidence.

A commissioning plan for public works should organize:

verifiable requirements;
inspections and tests by system;
integrated tests;
pass/fail criteria;
open-item management;
documentation of results;
training;
delivery of manuals and As-Built documentation;
transition to operations.

Resumption delivers public value only when the project stops being merely a “construction project” and begins functioning as a school, healthcare facility, water-supply system, road, urban facility, or operational infrastructure.

The cost of leaving a public work stalled rises even without physical progress

A stalled public work continues to generate economic costs. Some are visible, while others do not immediately appear in the budget.

Direct and indirect costs include:

site security and preservation;
weather-related deterioration;
vandalism and theft;
corrosion and loss of stored equipment;
warranty expiration;
updates to designs and permits;
new mobilization;
increases in material and labor prices;
the need to redo work;
administrative and legal costs;
unavailability of the planned public service;
maintenance of temporary solutions.

The amount disbursed before the interruption also carries an opportunity cost. Resources tied up in a structure that does not deliver service could be financing another functional asset. The longer the interruption, the greater the risk that the project’s original economic logic no longer represents reality.

For this reason, a resumption decision should be accompanied by a new economic analysis, not merely an update of the contractual balance.

Stalled public works require portfolio governance, not only site inspection

The TCU has been treating the issue as one of coordination and backlog management, not merely as the sum of individual contracts. Acórdão 2,134/2023-Plenário required the Casa Civil to prepare a management plan for the federal public-works portfolio, including strategy, guidelines, prioritization, targets, and indicators.

This approach is essential. Construction inspection operates at the individual-project level. An administration with dozens or hundreds of interrupted projects also needs portfolio governance.

At portfolio level, there should be:

a single registry of projects;
standardized status classification;
periodic updates of cost to complete;
documented root cause;
technical, legal, budgetary, and social risk;
an institutional owner for the next action;
a formal decision on the project’s disposition;
resumption milestones;
indicators for time to enter operation.

The Project, Program, and Portfolio Governance solution is applicable precisely when an organization needs to move beyond isolated cases and structure common criteria for decision-making, prioritization, and monitoring.

The new Destrava phase reinforces the need for coordinated solutions

On June 11, 2026, the TCU participated in the signing of a cooperation agreement that marked a new phase of the Integrated Program for Resumption of Public Works, Destrava II. The initiative brings together oversight bodies, the justice system, and the federal government and seeks solutions for projects interrupted by judicial or administrative decisions, with priority given to education and healthcare.

The interinstitutional structure recognizes that some interruptions cannot be resolved by a single agency. There are situations in which engineering, budget, contract, oversight, judicial decisions, public assets, and public policy overlap.

For local managers, however, institutional coordination does not replace technical documentation. The more actors participate in the decision, the greater the need for traceability:

what the current physical condition is;
which amounts were measured and paid;
which open issues remain;
which design will be adopted;
how much completion will cost;
which risks were identified;
which alternative was selected and why;
who assumes each responsibility;
which conditions must be satisfied before remobilization.

Without this baseline, an attempt to unblock the contract may simply move the conflict into the next stage.

What a municipality should do when it identifies a stalled project in its portfolio

For a municipal government, public authority, or state agency, the first move should not be to publish a new procurement. It should first stabilize the information.

An initial procedure can follow this sequence:

preserve the site, documents, and evidence;
gather the contract, designs, budget, measurements, payments, amendments, orders, and communications;
perform a physical survey of what exists;
assess quality and conservation condition;
reconcile execution, measurement, and payment;
identify the cause of the interruption and any open issues;
review designs, quantities, and current requirements;
estimate the cost of the remaining work;
verify permits, land ownership, and interferences;
compare resumption alternatives;
define the contractual strategy with the competent areas;
structure the new technical package and acceptance criteria.

The purpose of this sequence is to prevent political urgency to resume the project from replacing proper engineering preparation.

Which documents form the minimum diagnostic baseline

There is no single list valid for every project, but the analysis normally begins with four document sets.

Design baseline

preliminary studies;
Basic Engineering Design Package;
Detailed Engineering Design Package and revisions;
descriptive specifications;
calculation memoranda;
surveys and subsurface investigations;
approvals and permits;
partial As-Built documentation, when available.

Contractual baseline

procurement notice and attachments;
contract;
winning bid;
contract pricing spreadsheet;
schedule;
risk matrix;
guarantees;
contract amendments;
work and suspension orders.

Execution baseline

construction log;
inspection reports;
measurement reports;
photographic records;
tests and certificates;
NCRs and open items;
submittals and approvals;
inventory of materials and equipment.

Financial and administrative baseline

payments made;
budget balance;
funding source;
counterpart funding;
agreement or transfer instrument;
sanctioning proceedings;
relevant legal opinions and administrative decisions.

Missing documentation should not be filled by assumption. It should be recorded as a gap and addressed in the investigation plan.

How Consulting Engineering can support a portfolio of stalled public works

When resumption involves design review, budgeting, procurement, inspection, testing, and acceptance, Owner’s Engineering acts as an integrating layer across disciplines and preserves the owner’s perspective and interests.

Structure technical governance for resumption

The role of Consulting Engineering is not to replace the authority of the public manager or decide legal matters that belong to the Administration. Its value lies in producing an independent, comparable, and traceable technical basis for the decision.

In a portfolio of stalled public works, support can be organized in layers.

Portfolio screening

The first layer classifies projects by materiality, urgency, maturity, risk, and resumption potential. The objective is to avoid mobilizing complete teams for every project at the same time.

Due diligence and condition survey

For priority projects, the team reconstructs the current situation: documentation, field condition, measurements, contracts, risks, and gaps. Technical Engineering Due Diligence is appropriate when the Administration needs to transform dispersed information into a diagnosis and action plan.

Design and budget review

After establishing the existing condition, the scope, design, quantities, and cost to complete are reviewed. When necessary, the technical package is updated to support a new procurement.

Procurement and inspection strategy

Engineering structures technical criteria, measurement requirements, evidence, and acceptance criteria to reduce the risk of repeating previous causes. Technical Support for Construction and Engineering Contract Inspection can support implementation without removing the public inspector’s legal responsibilities.

Commissioning and handover

Finally, completion must be demonstrated through testing, documentation, training, and acceptance, closing the transition from resumed construction to a functional asset.

A practical maturity model for resumption

Before authorizing remobilization, the project can be classified by readiness level.

Level	Status	Recommended decision
0 — unknown	documentation and physical condition not reconciled	diagnose before procurement
1 — diagnosed	cause and current condition known	define solution alternative
2 — technically defined	design and remaining work updated	consolidate budget and risks
3 — ready for procurement	scope, budget, site, and permits sufficient	prepare procurement
4 — ready for mobilization	contract, work front, and governance ready	start execution
5 — ready for handover	tests, documentation, and operations planned	complete and place into service

This model avoids the most common leap: moving directly from “stalled project” to “new procurement.” Between those two extremes lies a sequence of technical maturation.

How to prevent resumption from becoming a second interruption

Structured inspection reduces the chance of a second interruption by creating traceability for progress, open issues, decisions, measurements, and acceptance criteria during the new execution phase.

Structure technical inspection support for the resumption

A second interruption is usually more expensive than the first because it occurs on an already deteriorated asset and after a new institutional mobilization. For this reason, the resumption stage should be more rigorous than an ordinary procurement.

Before restarting, it is advisable to verify:

design consistent with the current condition;
budget aligned with the remaining work;
feasible execution methodology;
work area effectively available;
valid permits;
clearly allocated responsibilities;
schedule compatible with supplies and constraints;
contractor financial and operational capability;
objective measurement criteria;
decision routine for RFIs, changes, and nonconformities;
testing and acceptance plan;
availability of staff and budget to operate the asset after handover.

A mature resumption changes the question from “when will the project restart?” to “which conditions must be satisfied so that it restarts and does not stop again?”

The national map should guide prevention, not only recovery

The most important lesson from the TCU figures is that Brazil cannot treat stalled public works merely as a backlog to be cleared. While new projects quickly become stalled, the backlog replenishes itself.

Resumption policy needs to advance alongside prevention policy. This involves improving the quality of studies, increasing design maturity, structuring realistic budgets, analyzing feasibility, releasing work fronts before mobilization, allocating risks, and strengthening inspection.

Three controls are especially relevant in the procurement cycle:

technical review of the Terms of Reference before publication;
technical bid analysis, including feasibility due diligence;
cost and measurement control to distinguish overpricing, superfaturamento, and unfeasible pricing.

Prevention does not eliminate every external event, but it substantially reduces the number of interruptions caused by problems that could have been identified before contracting.

Indicators that should accompany the number of stalled public works

Counting projects is necessary, but insufficient to measure the effectiveness of resumption policy. A more mature management system tracks flow and outcome indicators.

Useful indicators include:

total number of stalled projects;
total planned value of the portfolio;
resources already invested;
updated cost to complete;
average interruption duration;
percentage of projects with completed diagnosis;
percentage with updated design;
percentage with confirmed funding source;
number of projects resumed during the period;
number of projects that stalled again;
average time between resumption decision and mobilization;
average time between resumption and entry into operation;
public benefit effectively delivered.

The “resumed” indicator alone can create a false sense of success. A project remobilized for only a few months and then interrupted again does not represent a solution. The final indicator should be an asset that is completed, accepted, and operating.

Final considerations

The TCU map reveals a structural backlog. In the consolidation with an April 2025 cutoff, 11,469 of 22,621 projects financed with federal resources were stalled. Education and healthcare accounted for 70% of the cases. In June 2026, the Court was still describing the problem as approximately 22 thousand projects monitored and 11 thousand stalled, while reinforcing the Destrava Program and interinstitutional coordination.

The most important interpretation, however, is not statistical. Brazil needs to prevent the management of stalled public works from being limited to finding funding and remobilizing the construction site. Sustainable resumption requires technical diagnosis, reconstruction of the remaining scope, design and budget updates, treatment of root causes, contractual definition, structured inspection, commissioning, and preparation for operations.

For a manager responsible for a significant portfolio of interrupted projects, the most efficient approach is to transform the list of projects into a portfolio of decisions: which should be resumed, which need reformulation, which require a new procurement, and which no longer justify continuation. Engineering provides the objective basis for making that decision defensible, prioritized, and executable.

Technical references

[1] BRAZIL. Tribunal de Contas da União. Metade das obras financiadas com recursos federais estão paradas. Brasília, July 30, 2025. Data from the Stalled Public Works Dashboard with an April 2025 cutoff. Available at: [https://portal.tcu.gov.br/imprensa/noticias/metade-das-obras-financiadas-com-recursos-federais-estao-paradas](https://portal.tcu.gov.br/imprensa/noticias/metade-das-obras-financiadas-com-recursos-federais-estao-paradas)

[2] BRAZIL. Tribunal de Contas da União. Presidente do TCU assina acordo para retomada de obras públicas paralisadas. Brasília, June 11, 2026. Available at: [https://portal.tcu.gov.br/imprensa/noticias/presidente-do-tcu-assina-acordo-para-retomada-de-obras-publicas-paralisadas](https://portal.tcu.gov.br/imprensa/noticias/presidente-do-tcu-assina-acordo-para-retomada-de-obras-publicas-paralisadas)

[3] BRAZIL. Law No. 14,133 of April 1, 2021. Public Procurement and Administrative Contracts Law. Brasília, DF. Available at: [https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2021/lei/l14133.htm](https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2019-2022/2021/lei/l14133.htm)

[4] CÂMARA BRASILEIRA DA INDÚSTRIA DA CONSTRUÇÃO. Obras públicas paralisadas no Brasil: diagnóstico, propostas e a nova Lei de Licitações. Brasília, 2023. Available at: [https://cbic.org.br/obras-publicas-paralisadas-no-brasil-diagnostico-propostas-e-a-nova-lei-de-licitacoes/](https://cbic.org.br/obras-publicas-paralisadas-no-brasil-diagnostico-propostas-e-a-nova-lei-de-licitacoes/)

Frequently asked questions

How many public works are stalled in Brazil according to the TCU?

In the latest clearly published nationwide quantitative consolidation by the TCU, with an April 2025 cutoff, 22,621 projects financed with federal resources were mapped and 11,469 were stalled, equivalent to 50.7%. In June 2026, the TCU again referred to approximately 22 thousand projects being monitored and 11 thousand still stalled.

Which sectors account for the most stalled public works?

Education and healthcare account for the largest share. At the April 2025 cutoff, the two sectors together had 8,053 unfinished projects, about 70% of the interruptions monitored by the TCU.

Which states have the largest number of unfinished projects?

In the TCU’s July 2025 release, Maranhão, Bahia, Pará, and Minas Gerais were highlighted and together accounted for nearly four thousand unfinished projects. The ranking should also be interpreted considering portfolio size, value, and project type.

Should a stalled public work be immediately re-procured?

No. Before selecting the contractual route, the Administration needs to understand the project’s physical and documentary condition, identify the cause of interruption, define the remaining scope, update the design and budget, and assess the legally available alternatives.

Does the physical completion percentage show how much remains to finish?

Not necessarily. It is necessary to distinguish the measured percentage, paid percentage, apparent physical percentage, and technically usable percentage. Deterioration, rejected work, and untested systems may reduce the portion that can actually be reused.

What is the first technical document needed to resume a stalled public work?

A structured diagnosis is normally required, combining a field survey, condition assessment, reconciliation of measurements and payments, document analysis, root-cause analysis, and an open-issues map. The document name may vary according to the scope.

Why do recently started public works also become stalled?

Because problems involving design maturity, budgeting, work-area release, permitting, feasibility, contractor capability, and governance continue to occur. The TCU indicated that about 22% of projects started between April 2024 and April 2025 were already stalled at the analyzed cutoff.

What is the Destrava Program?

It is an interinstitutional initiative aimed at finding solutions for resuming interrupted public works. In June 2026, a new phase, Destrava II, was formalized with participation from the TCU, CNJ, the federal government, oversight bodies, and other institutions, prioritizing education and healthcare.

How should several stalled public works be prioritized at the same time?

Prioritization should combine social benefit, urgency, technically usable percentage, cost to complete, time to operation, deterioration risk, design maturity, permits, land status, funding source, and contractual complexity.

Which engineering service is appropriate for diagnosing a portfolio of stalled public works?

Technical Due Diligence and Owner’s Engineering are appropriate structures for organizing diagnosis, risks, priorities, scope review, and resumption governance. Depending on the case, cadastral surveys, budgeting, Terms of Reference review, and technical inspection support may also be required.

Supplementary technical materials