The year 2019 is the first financial year of the new mandate of the governing bodies of ConstruGomes Engenharia, SA. For this new mandate, the Management established a set of strategic goals that will guide the Company’s performance for the next few years.
Now, these strategic goals can be consolidated into four major groups: activity growth; business sustainability; specialization; internationalization. To speak of ConstruGomes is to always speak of all these purposes. Throughout ConstruGomes' history, the company has developed a strategy of continuous and sustained growth of its turnover, it is a company that specializes in the construction of bridges and other large concrete structures, it is a company that has in its genesis the provision of services in international markets.
The activity developed by ConstruGomes during 2019 was perfectly aligned with the Company's strategy and the achievement of its strategic goals. First of all, because we continue our internal training project. The Company has to overcome the biggest challenges that can be presented to civil construction companies every day.
Being present in the biggest construction projects implies being prepared and being able to overcome these challenges effectively. To this end, the Company has been actively investing in its internal training, through the growth of its technical staff, investment in innovation, the improvement of quality and safety and health management systems.
In 2019, we managed to see our people management system and the environmental management system certified by the NP 4427: 2018 and ISO 14001: 2015 standards, respectively. We are currently a company with four certifications recognized by APCER. This effectively demonstrates our commitment to the challenges we embrace.
Being capacitated, we can effectively continue to grow, based on the larger works that are located outside Portugal. In 2019, we verified an increase in our activity of more than 20% compared to 2018, to an amount of 30.5 million Euros.
Of these 30.5 million euros, 94.78% were executed outside the national market. These works are, in their great majority, special projects of great dimension, which lack a great specialization on the part of their performers. ConstruGomes has been able to achieve this level of specialization that, combined with internal training, allows the company to perform above average.
This performance could be measured through the attribution by the IABSE - The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering, to the Mersey Bridge project, of the award for Outstanding Structure of 2019. This project was entirely executed by ConstruGomes, from the foundations, going through the pillars to the bridge decks.
But in 2019 not everything was easy. Projects and clients present risks that we are sometimes unable to overcome. An example of this is the project to build a new bridge over the Danube River in Bratislava, whose performance was below expectations and which, due to its size, had implications for the result of the year. The result, although lower than in previous years, was positive at € 374,497.92, and motivates us to continue to follow the path we have defined and to exceed the goals we have projected.
Thank you all very much.
Carlos Gomes - Chairman of the Board of Directors
