Breakfast has just arrived and Dimitris Bountolos, director of innovation and information services at the Ferrovial group, has had time to summarize the reason for his use: “It is not uncommon for the concept of innovation to be used cosmetically, but in There would be little point in using the word if it does not help transform the business, which is supposed to be the objective of innovating.” This civil engineer trained in Granada, who previously held the same position in Iberia, goes so far as to say that at Ferrovial the innovation he is responsible for is part of “a well-established corporate attitude, which consists of seeking competitiveness in geographically dispersed businesses, which require robust processes and must adapt to changes, attributes that are achieved today through digitalization. But not all digitalization is innovative – he warns – and could even become routine, since now we all use the same digital tools.
The dominant point of the conversation will fall – it could have been AI in the Spanish high-speed network, or the financial logic of participating in airports such as JFK in New York, among other issues – on the management of the highways that Ferrovial operates in different parts. of the world. “Some time ago, a strategic review revealed that all (or almost all) were operating with effective, recurring maintenance of assets, but what was happening with the users of those infrastructures was not monitored.” Which would ultimately translate into an ambitious project in which Ferrovial, with Salesforce, is developing a management model for its linear infrastructures in different parts of the world, based on software that was originally designed for interaction between people.
Said this way, Bountolos' opening sentence is better understood: Ferrovial has centers of excellence in different countries dedicated to specific problems, some vertical, where best practices, possible partners and alliances, and potential use cases are identified. “You work with things that do not exist, that cannot be bought on the market or tested in situ, all that remains is to simulate them. Furthermore, the company is very clear that it is not enough to add its internal capabilities plus the historical legacy of the company, which must open up, be more didactic, socialize with the academic world, explore collateral projects and even admit the co-participation of third parties interested in certain technologies.”
Along with Salesforce, another partner in the project is NTT Data, which is in charge of creating a center of excellence for infrastructure management, a world first that makes Bountolos proud because, being global by nature, it has established its headquarters in Spain. Among the assets benefiting from this current – because it is a current, not an experiment – two of the highways that the group operates in Canada and the US stand out. It mentions 407 TR, in Toronto, the largest toll road in the world and the first which eliminated barriers and controlled vehicles by radio frequency in order to introduce dynamic tolling based on the level of service: when a section begins to become congested, the increase in price expels traffic, this is the procedure preferred by the authorities to balance its use . Or the brand new I-66, on the outskirts of Washington, described as the first 100% digital.
In these, as in the one operated by Ferrovial in Dallas, “there is a lot of technology that links the user with the infrastructure: sensors, cameras, radars, scanners, edge servers along the route, algorithms with pre-programmed cases that in less than a second generate alerts. “They are digital interactions between a physical asset (infrastructure) and individuals and their vehicles.” And the conversation will lead to much more.
