Betar

Tell us a little about your career.

After graduating from I.S.T., my career began at a large school in the field of energy equipment, telecommunications and industrial systems (Efacec), which allowed me to take part in important projects at home and abroad, often in contact with large international companies in multidisciplinary endeavors. My basic engineering training was complemented by chapters in business management and direction. I had the opportunity to take part in landmark projects at the Lisbon Metro and in the initial phases of the Messina and Porto Metro projects. After leaving Efacec, I joined the implementation team for the first phase of the Metro Sul do Tejo and, in 2010, the Operation and Maintenance Sub concessionaire for the Light Rail System of the Porto Metropolitan Area, which since 2018 has been called ViaPorto, a railway company belonging to the Barraqueiro Group.

What are ViaPorto’s main responsibilities and challenges?

The responsibilities and challenges should be characterized in various ways in the areas of Operation and Maintenance. The first is permanently safeguarding the safety of people and goods. The safety of traffic depends on monitoring and maintaining the assets of the Fixed Installations and Rolling Stock and complying with the Operation and Safety procedures. The daily challenge of planning and producing a quality offer for a galloping demand (8.7 million in October) has a second aspect, which has to do with the ability to guarantee the reliability and attractiveness of the transport system. Real-time management of operations (railways, facilities, networks and associated services, customer support and security) is indispensable for ensuring the value of the service.  The third crucial aspect is maintaining the availability of Fixed Installations (infrastructure, equipment and technical systems) and Rolling Stock fleets, which must be pursued through the development of planned predictive and inspective or preventive activities, which do not dispense with line intervention teams (pickets), dispatched daily. Having the resources for these activities is one of the challenges. As part of asset management, Metro do Porto is responsible for the large-scale expansion, renovation or technological modernization of the metro network. The fourth aspect includes the challenges of sustainability. On the one hand, financial sustainability, which is highly dependent on the public procurement framework, and on the other, adapting the company’s current good practices to ESG standardization and reporting. ViaPorto has maintained an integrated quality management system certified to ISO9001, 14001 and 45001 standards. In addition to legal compliance concerns, it has paid particular attention to social and governance issues, developing its activities in line with the factors of environmental and social responsibility and corporate ethics and culture.)

What is most attractive about your job?

At ViaPorto I’m responsible for Fixed Installations. I think the team’s greatest challenge has been the ability to maintain the high level of availability of the infrastructure and equipment unchanged over time. At the same time, the future adaptation of the maintenance paradigm to the upcoming maturity phase of the metro network is a new challenge. After 20 years of intense exploitation, some solutions have become obsolete and the end-of-life of different materials, components, equipment and systems brings new challenges. The evolution of technology and the opportunities offered by digitalization, along with the necessary renewal of the network in various specialties, require a new level of balance in terms of financial availability and operational risk management, to maintain the sustainability of the value chain and quality of service.

You’ve been relying on Betar to carry out inspections of works of art and tunnels. How does this partnership contribute to the development of your work?

Betar has been an important partner in ViaPorto’s activity as it has added to our work the vision of a specialist with extensive experience, allowing us to analyze and monitor the evolution of the state of the infrastructure in a coherent manner and, in this way, control exposure to structural risk. It should also be emphasized that in the problematic cases where specific technical support was requested from Betar, its immediate availability, technical capacity and alignment of objectives and priorities in the solutions found were appreciated.

What is the strategy and objectives for the future?

Today’s uncertain times make strategy quickly obsolete and objectives volatile, especially when pursuing very specific scenarios. To face the reality of permanent change, objectives necessarily involve working on companies’ ability to adapt and be resilient. What can be said about the strategy is that ViaPorto intends to continue positioning itself as a reliable, safe and responsible organization, delivering value in mobility solutions.

This interview is an integral part of Revista Artes & Letras #172, january 2025
Partially automatic translation from portuguese: some expressions may differ from their actual meaning.