Betar

How did you get into the road sector?

Being from Braga, I graduated in Civil Engineering from the University of Minho, having chosen to specialize in Roads. When I finished my degree in 2003, I decided to come to Lisbon to work for Consulpav, a consultancy firm specializing in pavements. I acquired an across-the-board knowledge of the area, with a lot of operational work and, six years later, when the road sub-concessions were launched, I joined the so-called Grupo Rodoviário das Rotas Regionais, the consortium that managed the Baixo Alentejo and Algarve Litoral Sub-Concession Contracts, in the role of Conservation and Operation Technician. I have remained with the Baixo Alentejo Sub concession to this day and, in 2020, I was appointed Director of Operations and Maintenance (O&M), so I consider that my career in this organization has been marked by gradual growth, with the possibility of moving through all phases of the operational area. I am currently responsible for all O&M activities on the IP2, between the Ramal and Castro Verde junctions, in terms of operations, safety, quality control, maintenance, assistance, etc. It’s been a huge learning experience and very rewarding.

The Baixo Alentejo Sub concession operates and maintains 113 kilometers of track. What are the biggest challenges?

We are a Public-Private Partnership providing a road management and operation service to the State, with Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) managing the Sub concession Contract. This is a well-known business characterized by a set of criteria and contractual obligations, controlled above all by a financial model and Quality Control Plan (QCP). We have short-, medium- and long-term objectives for managing the infrastructures that make up the Sub concession object, in order to maintain the quality indexes during the respective lifecycle, vis-à-vis IP and road users. The O&M Department’s biggest challenges are to define and organize strategies with a view to meeting these objectives efficiently and rigorously, enabling us to provide the road with the best traffic and safety conditions and thus continue to earn the trust of users. We try to carry out intelligent and preventive management of the condition of the infrastructure, through the periodic assessments defined in the QCP, and thus prioritize the necessary annual investments, avoiding reactive maintenance whenever possible.

In the road network, concessionaires team up with partners to find the best management solutions. What characteristics do you look for in the companies that work with you?

Our work cannot be done without partners, and the characteristics we look for are technical know-how, solidity, continuity, availability, and problem-solving capacity. Now, after three and a half years in management (on my part), I consider myself privileged to be able to count on a list of partners in different areas, with solid technical knowledge, who support us in assessing the condition of the infrastructures under our responsibility and in making decisions. We practice a policy of continuity with our partners, with the financial factor not being the deciding factor. Betar is clearly one of them and has been with us from the start. We rely on Betar as a partner when it comes to works of art, as it has demonstrated the availability, solidity, and technical skills we are looking for. Betar has implemented the GOA management system in our Sub concession, a highly useful tool for our organization in terms of registering all the Works of Art under our responsibility, as well as all the inspections carried out on them since the start of the operation. We are counting on Betar for the challenges that will surely arise in the coming years.

What about the future?

We are currently at a mature stage of the operation, with half of the Sub concession period completed. Many challenges have been overcome and we intend to continue with a successful strategy, always based on efficiency, transparency, and compliance, in order to continue earning the trust of IP and IP2 users. As far as the O&M Department’s strategy for the next 15 years is concerned, it will be based on periodic assessment of the condition of the infrastructure, with the support of our partners, enabling us to manage the annual budgets in a preventive manner, always with the technical and operational capacity to respond to imponderables.

This interview is an integral part of Revista Artes & Letras #164, may 2024
Partially automatic translation from portuguese: some expressions may differ from their actual meaning.