Names like Jean Nouvel, Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava or Ricardo Bofill are present in the collective imagination as authors of architectural works as magnificent as the Agbar tower in Barcelona, the Hearst tower in New York, the City of Arts in Valencia or the complex of houses Walden 7, in Sant Just Desvern. But behind these torrents of creativity there is always a team of engineers, often unknown to the general public, who are the ones who really make a work put its feet on the ground and last over time.
Socotec is one of these engineering companies that is currently working on making decisions on works as important as lines 8 and 9 of the Barcelona Metro or the Castellana building in Madrid that El Corte Inglés wants to turn into its flagship commitment to the environment. With 400 workers and almost 31 million turnover in Spain -1,300 million internationally-, the company wants to take the lead in providing more sustainable solutions in the construction sector, of a very traditional nature, which according to data from the Union Europe generates 42% of CO₂ emissions.
“As a company we want to be pioneers of change; We can contribute many ideas from engineering to extend the useful life of materials, their recirculation, as well as greater sustainability in the works and solutions, even for the lack of water, with proposals that help to capture and reuse water from the project itself. to execute”, explains Guillem Baraut, general director of Socotec Spain. The company calculates that the emissions associated with the construction of a building can be reduced by up to 70%. Doing it in a conventional way generates between 85 and 104 kg of CO₂ per cubic meter, while their proposals reduce emissions to 31 kg/m².
Baraut, 45, represents the generational change produced in the company in the last two years after the majority of the shares were acquired by the multinational Socotec. Before its internationalization, it was known as Bac Engineering, and had participated in important civil works such as the Dalt ring road or l'Eix Transversal. Socotec is currently carrying out efficiency studies, especially on paving issues, with very interesting results in Barcelona, where the use of synthetic bitumen and recycled plastics has generated less hot and lighter pavements, which requires less lighting at night. . The problem they face, they emphasize, is the administration itself, with "slow processes, few incentives and lack of obligation" when applying sustainable criteria in the works.
