Manuel Manrique, Chairman of Sacyr, received the National Innovation and Design Award in the Large company category, from their Majesties, King Felipe and Queen Letizia of Spain.
Diana Morant, Minister for Science and Innovation, and Adrian Barbón, President of the Principality of Asturias, attended the award-giving ceremony held in Avilés, among other authorities.
These awards, given by the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation, recognize Sacyr’s business model, that is “based on innovation as a strategic value”.
“To us, innovation is a driver and generator of competitive advantages. It’s a tool that helps us prepare for the future through new ways of designing, building and managing our infrastructures and services”, Manrique explained.
As Manuel Manrique pointed out, “innovation has been part of the corporate values at Sacyr since the company’s birth, over 35 years ago”.
Throughout its history, Sacyr has developed major innovation projects, such as the expansion of the Panama Canal. This is a unique project in the world that, thanks to Sacyr’s innovation, achieved a great deal of efficiency and water savings, in collaboration with multiple companies across the world.
Recently, Sacyr won the Canal del Dique project in Colombia, an initiative heavily marked by innovation and sustainability. This P3 project aims to recover the coral of the Cartagena de Indias Bay, the damaged river ecosystem, and mitigate the increasing floods due to climate change, and improve the quality of life of the 1.5 million inhabitants in the area.
Digitization and ecological transition
With this award, the Government of Spain acknowledges how Sacyr faces the digitization and ecological transition challenges to find new business opportunities based on open innovation and public-private collaboration.
45 innovation projects
In 2022, Sacyr developed 45 innovation projects with a budget of over €13 million. Nearly 350 Sacyr professionals are involved in innovation-related initiatives Innovation goes hand in hand with sustainability, as this is one of the company’s main focal points.
Sacyr develops projects to reduce carbon emissions, be more energy efficient, improve the management of water resources and recover waste and reuse it in the production chain.
A push to open innovation
As part of its company strategy, Sacyr has a sound open innovation program, that aims to brings external skills into the company.
Sacyr iChallenges is the cornerstone of open innovation in the company. The latest edition received 276 submissions to bring solutions to the four business challenges issued to the community. This program is open internationally and got proposals from 34 countries. The Sacyr Foundation recognizes the best Sacyr iChallenges initiatives with its annual Innovation Awards, that have already celebrated 12 editions.
Innovation is also deeply instilled in the company’s culture at Sacyr through training, awareness-raising, communication, and the recognition of innovative initiatives. More than 1,000 professionals have completed training in innovation and over 3,600 attended the monthly innovation-themed sessions.
