Betar

Tell us about your professional career and your current responsibilities.

I’m a Civil Engineer who graduated from FEUP in 1991. When I finished my degree, I worked on a project at the invitation of a professor at the university. In 1993 I started at Mota&Companhia. I started in the physical planning area and later worked on several of the company’s building sites with production responsibilities. Until 1998, Portugal was going through a phase of a lot of public works for Expo’98 and after that the PPP road concession processes began. Mota-Engil led a consortium of several Portuguese companies and we took part in various tenders that culminated in the award of several road concessions between 1999 and 2013. I accompanied all these tenders, project and production processes. In 2008 I was invited to set up a Road Engineering Department, which brought together all the company’s technical expertise related to road infrastructure works. In 2013 I was seconded to Poland, where I was responsible for the company’s management and remained until 2020. It was very challenging, new people, new cultures, a complicated language… When I returned, I took on responsibility for a corporate Engineering and Technical Services Unit, which provides support services in project management and operations to all the Group’s Business Units and geographies. These are my current responsibilities.

What are the biggest challenges of your job?

Mota-Engil is very large and geographically dispersed, with diverse activities, so responding with quality and on time to all the technical requests that come to us are the biggest challenges. There are many needs for support from technical engineering services and the human resources available are limited. The study of the most appropriate technical solutions for each case and the availability of the entire team to take part in projects that cut across the Group, be they innovation, sustainability, or risk management, pose additional challenges.

Mota-Engil is a leading company in the Construction and Public Works sector. How do you explain this success?

The Group’s success is very much based on the diversification of its business areas, which boosts growth in the volume of work in each market where we are present, although the construction business is the main growth vector. Our presence on three continents, with activities in more than 20 countries, makes Mota-Engil a benchmark in construction in many places where we have operations. This geographical dispersion allows us to minimize the impact of economic and political cycles on the Group’s turnover. Our commitment to Safety at Work and Environmental Sustainability are other factors that contribute to our success. Obviously, the stable shareholder structure and the recent entry of a major Chinese construction company into the Group’s capital guarantee access to larger projects. People, investment in training and the ability to retain talent are critical factors for the success of businesses and organizations and I believe that Mota-Engil also stands out from its competitors in this area. I believe that the combination of all these factors is the key to success.

You have chosen Betar as a partner in some projects. Why is that?

The Mota-Engil Group has a long-standing and constant relationship with Betar in Africa, for example in Mozambique. Betar is a design company with a lot of experience, more than 50 years in the market, which therefore guarantees us very diverse competences to respond to our challenges as Builders. With its highly experienced and competent technical staff, we have used its consultancy services mainly for civil engineering, geotechnical and road projects. The most recent collaborations with Betar have been on road infrastructures in Africa, such as an airport in Rwanda, where we are the builders, a tender process in Uganda and more recently in the Ivory Coast. Betar provides us with guarantees of meeting deadlines and technical capacity and is therefore a partner that Mota-Engil intends to maintain in future projects.

What are the prospects for the future?

Digital transformation and the incorporation of artificial intelligence into our processes and decisions are already a reality, but I believe that in the short term they will be a determining factor in the differentiation and quality of technical services. Designers and engineering consultants, such as Betar, will play a fundamental role in accelerating the implementation of these technologies, as is the case with the incorporation of BIM processes in the execution projects they produce for their clients. Projects using BIM software, incorporating new technologies, will allow for more rigorous and efficient construction/exploitation management and will be factors of differentiation and success for construction companies and building owners.

This interview is an integral part of Revista Artes & Letras #162, march 2024
Partially automatic translation from portuguese: some expressions may differ from their actual meaning.