Antonio Piqueras,
Manager of Superporto do Açú”
in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
The “Superporto do Açú” is currently being
built in Sao Joa da Barra in the State of Rio
de Janeiro and, at the help of this major pro-
ject is Antonio Piqueras, the project mana-
ger.
Antonio has been working at FCC since
1995, that is, eighteen years and practically
all of his job experience has been acquired at
FCC: “100% of my professional career has
been in maritime projects. I have been lucky
to have participated in projects that area al-
most always innovative”, he remarked.
“I started as the head of the Technical Office
at the construction project of the Saladillo
inner harbour in Algeciras”, he told us, “whe-
re we used single layer “accropode” type
blocks for building the main seawall, when in
Spain, there had only been two prior similar
projects.”
“Later, I continued to work as the manager
of the “Third and Fourth Quay” in the port
of Almeria. At that time, our floating dock
“Mar del Teide” had not manufactured many
caissons and we were awarded a project for
building 6 of these for the Port of Almeria.”
“After Almería, we secured another major
project in Palma de Mallorca where I partici-
pated as the project manager: the construc-
tion of the “Terminal Mixta Ro.Ro/Lo.Lo”. In
this project, FCC used the Bocami dredger
for the first time. It was an interesting project
because of the problems in managing ma-
terials from the quarry, the process for dy-
namic compacting of soil that we used, and
the experience acquired in managing scarce
resources because of the fact that we were
working in an island”.
After the project in the Balearic Islands, I re-
turned to the Peninsula, to the port of Cas-
tellón, where I continued to work as a project
manager and then was promoted to Group
manager, and then, head of the Department.
At the Castellón harbour, FCC was an exam-
ple of a harbour building construction com-
pany since during a 10-year period; we en-
larged the harbour and made into one that
is very competitive in relation to other ports.”
A major challenge
Also, Castellón harbour marked the first
experience in Spain in the construction of
seawalls with low-reflection caissons, and
the results were excellent since we have
been able to confirm empirically the predic-
tions previously made in the laboratory tests.
This last project did present an important
challenge since the construction procedu-
res were developed for the first time for this
specific project since Spain did not have any
seawalls of such characteristics before. The
patent is held by FC and the results were as
expected.”
Lastly, at the end of 2012, we were awarded
the construction of what is to become one
of the largest harbours in the world; terminal
The boss
and his project
