“At Ingener we create relationships based on trust, we work on a team system and from this we gained the most valuable thing that a company like this can have, which is linking minds,” says engineer Daniel Vázquez, Ingener’s President. He also explains that the company does not feel the slowing of economic activity that is perceived in other sectors. “Our motivation is to take advantage of the fact that we maintain a good level of activity to sustain a presence abroad; that is our challenge and that is what stimulates us,” declares Vázquez.

 

Mr. Vázquez greets us in his office, in the large old house that hosts the company on Millán Street, in the Prado neighborhood of Montevideo. He shares this office with a colleague, which is not accidental. “This scheme at Ingener is the result of an evolution,” he says. “The fact that the president shares the office with another technician is a concept, an example that the office does not have to be a hierarchical structure but that the work is done with the team in the meeting room and then it continues when each one takes back their action items to accomplish, because each of us has our own responsibility to fulfill.”

 

Ingener’s President points out that “the aspect that has most changed the way we work is having good, well-equipped general workrooms, where the whole scheme of technical meetings and coordination is generated; where the company’s progress takes place. Here we share the guidelines of a study in preparation, prepare a new budget, follow the development of a work in progress or design the maintenance tasks for another project. And then everyone, with their laptops and other tools, continues working on the projects in their assigned places.”

 

This approach derives, also, from the fact that “the company is also active in the rest of the country; we have many sites and projects in the interior, services that are performed outside the company headquarters, both construction works and operations and maintenance contracts,” he reports.

 

“Documents are centralized but today anyone can access remotely either the last drawing or memory of a work or service from any location. And this has also helped to change the company’s dynamic. Our idea when calling a meeting at the company’s headquarters is to schedule short, productive meetings to set criteria, so then each employee can develop their assignments.”

 

What they seek is “not to generate isolated results but rather encourage a teamwork model. The person who helped us with this way of working is Enrique Baliño, with his consulting company Xn for the development of organizations’ management and operation. It creates working relationships based on trust, where you can talk about any issue and come up with the most valuable that a company like this one can have, which is linking all minds. Thanks to the dynamics of meetings and the generation of trust, even if you mess up, it is not so dramatic as if that person had to face a very big problem on their own,” says Vázquez.

 

And he explains that “we do everything from simple things, such as manual work on the site, to other relatively sophisticated tasks like all the engineering that we develop in the company.

 

“We offer the full range. Therefore, delegation based on trust is very important, something ingrained in Ingener’s DNA from the beginning. It is the pursuit of a very open, trusting relationship, which allows for example that when a problem arises, it can rise to the correct level. Someone who is at the frontline, working on something that may seem minor, always has access to whoever they deem necessary, in any part of the company’s structure.”

 

Construction, operation and maintenance.

 

 

Ingener was established in 1998 based on an innovative concept: to offer customer service after the work has been delivered, for the efficient operation and preservation of the value of the client’s infrastructure. Thanks to this work method, which links construction and preservation, INGENER managed to enhance both areas, acquiring a global vision and outlining suitable maintenance solutions.

Its areas of expertise are renewable and conventional energy, industry, port services, commercial areas and thermal conditioning, and it provides design, construction, and operation and maintenance services.

The company works in the areas of construction, and operation and maintenance, with two-thirds of the workers in construction and a third in operation and maintenance services.

In its 18 years of existence, the company has been a presence in almost all of the large works that were carried out in the country for both the public and private sectors.

“In the last two years we have had very good opportunities to resolve the power connection to the national grid for large wind and photovoltaic facilities; this includes substations and modifications in existing UTE substations, so that these new power stations can begin operating,” says Vázquez. “In other words, recently we have focused on the construction of this type of projects with the associated engineering works, equipment supply – and construction and maintenance once the plants are operating. Now a new opportunity is arising with two wind farms that we have not built but have been trusted with the maintenance, some operational tasks and network management; so Ingener is the trusted company for the power evacuation of the farms, becoming the interlocutor with UTE from a technical point of view.”

The company has also recently participated in other types of projects, such as industrial plants.

 

Ingener combines construction and maintenance, allowing for more stable contracts. “This is the trend and it applies globally because it’s also related to the way projects are funded,” the director believes. “The repayments of these projects usually take many years, so the way to reduce investment risks is to ensure that these investments bring about the production expected in the initial project, thus ensuring the profitability of the project itself. A healthy way to do this is linking the constructor with the facility, so that they also become responsible for the work in the years that follow. It is a way of saying: ‘if I have to maintain this facility, I will try to build it as best as possible so that its maintenance is as efficient as possible.’ It is a worldwide trend, where the most typical case can be seen in the private-public participation projects or PPP. These are 20-year contracts where repayment is usually tied to the quality of service obtained. For example, for so many kilometers of a roadway built under a PPP contract, the user pays an annual fee if the roadway is available following certain conditions and if it is unavailable, there is a penalty. If the roadway shows greater deterioration than what was expected, for example, instead of 100% of the fee, this year the user pays a lower percentage, according to the stipulations of the contract. In other words, the constructor increasingly becomes involved with the operation side.”

 

At Ingener, there are areas of activity that are strategic, says Vázquez. “When you incorporate new areas, some of them might not end up being a business in themselves. Even though they are profitable, they do not ‘move the needle’ but we see them as strategic because they might also allow us to participate in certain area of expertise. In other words, we hold to some activities that keep us up-to-date; for example training, courses on protection of electrical installations —because it is strategic for the entire company beyond the business in itself.

At the same time, in a company like Ingener with highly competent people, “you have to contribute with ‘deep thinking’ to justify high salaries; adding value is key, especially in the technical area. You have to choose the areas you want to participate in and those you don’t. Some activities are more like ‘commodities’, where it is more difficult to add value. You can do it, you have the capability but ultimately companies without good economic results will go under. That has lead us to strategically define the issues we want to focus on and to leave the rest.”

 

Uruguay can export engineering services

 

Vázquez explains that Ingener is not feeling the slowing of economic activity that is perceived in other sectors. “Our concern or challenge is to take advantage of the fact that we have maintained a good level of activity to sustain an effect abroad which helps to average the ups and downs of different markets. That is the motto or the challenge we have set for ourselves, not to put ‘all our eggs in one basket.’ We want to diversify.”

Due to Ingener’s history, he thinks that Uruguay is in position to export engineering services. “Fortunately, Ingener has been taking the first steps in that direction,” says Vázquez. “But first, the company had to strengthen in Uruguay; i.e., a stable organization was required, with stable clients, to avoid eventually being in a difficult situation where our company would just plod along. A company where matters could be delegated. And financially, we have managed to put together a solid structure that allows us to face the challenge of working abroad, reaching throughout the Southern Cone.”

In this, he thinks Uruguay has a comparative advantages. “First of all, it has the advantage of having competent people at all levels, people who like to work, are proud of their work and who are enthusiastic about what they do, and that is fundamental. The first thing we did when we decided to become an international company was to analyze where we should begin, as you cannot try to do just anything because then the possibility of success is very small. But within the niche where Ingener works, there are projects of a certain size, in countries of this region, that may be interesting for us; projects that are easy to handle for a company like ours.”

Vázquez points out a key point to competing in the market: “We already have the capacity to be in charge of supplies in any country in the world, because we have already gained the necessary experience. We buy supplies from China, Europe, United States. For example, in a construction project for the power or electro-mechanical industry, you first have to build the civil works which are, in some way, the base, and the base has to be built right from the technical point of view, which is what we do. But another very important aspect is to know how to buy those electro-mechanical elements that are part of the process and which we do not manufacture. In Uruguay, we have been able to work on important projects that gave us the possibility of looking for solutions, purchasing the best solutions anywhere in the world and we achieved the necessary expertise that allows us to replicate this abroad. For us, the starting point of this cycle was the UPM Pulp Mill project, where the exchange with the Finnish technicians was very good, starting with all of the management parts of the works, the projects, and understanding that culture that I call the “hydraulic jack”, which takes a step forward but does not go back. That allowed us to complete our first major international purchase of supplies,” he says. The last major purchase was a transformer for a 50 MW power generation plant. To give you an idea of the scale of this purchase, the transformer took up the whole flatbed of a truck and entailed a series of very specific technical considerations. We bought it from an Indian top tier manufacturer. That was quite a challenge, because from the time of purchase until its arrival, anything could have happened to that equipment. But it was duly delivered for the project in Uruguay.”

 

Encouraging young people

 

“Another thing that is of utmost importance for us is to find out what one is looking for, to find our vocation, taking into account that all this effort to open other spaces and move forward is fundamental for young people so they can see where they can develop; as said by Michael Naughton at the conference organized by ACDE [Spanish acronym for Christian association of business leaders] and UCU [Catholic University of Uruguay] entitled ‘Vocation of the business leader’. The best way to do this is to keep looking for new steps, new challenges. It might be more comfortable to stay with what we already have but we would be wasting the potential of a lot of valuable people. This is more psychological, more philosophical than financial. We want to avoid the comfort zone,” he states.

For Ingener’s executive director, “the tricky thing for a society is when the worth of work itself starts to get lost. Setting our company aside for a moment, I believe that globally if we do not have these strategies to move outside our comfort zone, we may be getting to the point of exhausting a cycle; I believe that, as a community, by doing very traditional things we may become constrained in the long run; going back to Ingener, leaving our comfort zone is a challenge that really motivates us”, he concludes.

 

Source: Revista Empresarial ACDE – September 2015.