María
Palau
de Gilbert
is OHL’s Quality and Environment Coordinator in Spain.
With more than 15 years of professional experience in OHL, I have collaborated with teams from Australia, Canada, Chile, Spain, Mexico, Norway, Peru, Czech Republic and Vietnam, among other markets. Throughout this period, I have witnessed firsthand the great advances experienced by the company in quality and environment. This is evidenced by the implementation of ISO 9001 in Quality Management Systems, which, in my opinion, was a turning point for the whole organization. Thanks to this commitment to quality management, we went from considering quality as an attribute of the projects we delivered to our clients to incorporating it into our corporate culture.
"Throughout more than 15 years experience in OHL, I have witnessed firsthand the great advances experienced by the company in quality and environment"
In 2017, we began to work on the development and certification of the Integrated Management System for the Prevention of Occupational Risks, Quality and the Environment. Thanks to this initiative, one of the most demanding of those I have a significant participation to date, we have been able to be more effective in management, lowering costs in certification, and a more efficient distribution of tasks and responsibilities and risk reduction, thanks to the increased coordination in the way we work.
Also, there is no doubt that the company includes the environmental variable in the business approach by including a circular economy, energy efficiency, water management and the protection of biodiversity among its objectives. The perspective of sustainability in our activity can be seen in all those tenders that require the conformity of sustainability assessment systems, including, among others, the BREEAM® (Building Research Establishment’s Environmental Assessment Method) and LEED® (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certifications, which assess the sustainability of the building and where OHL has 32 references.