Employing more than two thousand people, of whom around 30% are women, the Braga-based DST group, one of the largest in the national construction sector, continues to invest in advanced training for its workers.
With 10 professionals who have completed their doctorates, spread across different companies in the group and areas of specialisation, it currently has three other employees attending doctoral programmes, fully funded by the business empire owned by the Teixeira family, which Forbes ranks 35th on the list of Portugal’s richest, with a fortune estimated at €398 million.
On 23 January, Sara Costa, Innovation Manager at DTE, DST’s special installations company, defended her project, carried out as part of the Doctoral Programme in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Minho, which focuses on one of the most decisive issues for the future of the sector: the industrialisation of construction.
In a context where Portugal faces structural challenges in terms of productivity, a lack of skilled labour and an urgent need for innovation in the construction sector, this PhD ‘represents an unprecedented scientific contribution to the country, establishing a new way of understanding, defining and operationalising the industrialisation of construction, both in theory and in practice,’ emphasises DST in a statement.
‘This PhD shows that industrialising construction goes far beyond erecting building systems: it is about shaping minds, cultures and futures; it is about industrialising thinking, collaboration and collective ambition. The big question is no longer whether construction can be industrialised. The real question is whether industry and society are prepared to embrace this transformation with awareness and purpose,’ admits PhD student Sara Costa.
“This is the only way to increase wages.”
The study argues that industrialisation cannot be understood solely as productive innovation. ‘On the contrary, it is a profound organisational transformation that simultaneously affects structures, processes, business models and production systems, but also, and decisively, skills, behaviours, leadership, internal cultures and individual mindsets in a sector that traditionally resists change,’ notes the Braga-based group, which has a turnover of around €700 million and an EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) of €80 million.
‘Companies need more science to increase productivity and increase the number of products invented in Portugal. Only then can wages be increased,’ says José Teixeira, president of the DST group.
The businessman argues that ‘partnerships with universities, research centres and polytechnic institutes are essential, but they are only one step in the process,’ he points out.
“Companies need to have many more PhDs on their staff, in addition to masters and postgraduates. We need to have many more articles published in scientific journals, and that is the path we are taking. We need to be cited more often, and that is happening in the DST group,” Teixeira affirms.
“This is the path we are taking in the group to invent, to register patents – we have more than a dozen submitted in the area of industrial construction. We remain determined to invest in training across the entire work value chain as the solution to improving the lives of those who work with us,” promises the leader of the Braga-based group.
SOURCE: Jornal de Negócios
