Civil engineer Isabel Barba Menchen, Quality and Environment Manager at Sacyr Engineering and Infrastructure in Chile, won the 2023 Natural Innovators Award in the We Are Excellence.
The recognition came from the innovative tool he had developed, called CALO (short for Calidad en Obra, Quality on Site), for the digital control of inspection protocols of the units of execution of the works.
This platform optimizes communication between quality control and real-time monitorization roles.
This tool was first launched in late 2023 and has been fully deployed in 2024. CALO represents a before and after for the Quality team in terms of onsite protocol control. It can be used on both mobile phones and tablets and one of its greatest advantages is that it is integrated into Sacyr's management system and can be used in any project and country.
"In construction work there are thousands of protocols that used to be carried out physically, with papers, or inspection sheets, it had to go through five signatures. CALO was created to provide service and speed up that work. We take our management systems to a digital platform that automatically reaches the devices of the people who must check the status of the work," explains Isabel Barba.
CALO has been implemented in Sotero del Rio and Buin Paine Hospitals and in the Los Vilos-La Serena and Camino de la Fruta highways. The aim is to deploy it in all projects in Chile.
Isabel has been out of Spain for 10 years, and she has been in Chile for five years. In Peru, she started the rehabilitation and improvement of the Longitudinal de la Sierra 2 Norte and then it was transferred to Cajamarca, another maintenance section.
This engineer has also led the process through which Sacyr Chile has been certified as the first company in Chile to have a zero-waste certification and the first in Sacyr. This Aenor certification serves to validate that more than 90% of the waste in our work is recovered at the Sotero del Rio Hospital (Santiago de Chile).
