IELAC: Excellence Built to Last

By Paulo Pires

If I were asked to sum up IELAC in one sentence, I would say without hesitation: we are a company with strong capabilities and a steadily growing presence in the field of special installations. But that sentence alone does not explain what truly sets us apart. That comes down to our people.

A difference you can see on the ground

Over the years, I have come to realise that the one area where IELAC truly stands out — and this is something we often discuss internally — is the technical expertise of our team. We have a group of highly skilled professionals with what I consider to be above-average know-how, capable of delivering work to the highest technical standards on site and responding effectively to the challenges that arise.

I say this with pride, because it reflects both the people we choose and their self-driven commitment to continuous learning. Whenever a new situation arises, or an innovation challenge for which we do not yet have an immediate answer, within a matter of hours or days we have mastered it inside out. We do not allow ourselves to be limited by what we do not yet know.

This is particularly relevant in today’s market, where increasingly tight deadlines imposed on design teams often result in projects that require adjustments and improvements during the construction phase. It is our responsibility, once on site, to identify these opportunities for improvement and present them to the Client. Naturally, some of these improvements may have technical, financial or scheduling implications, but this is precisely what allows us to earn the recognition of our clients.

It is this technical reputation in the market that positions us as a leading name in the sector, to the point where other companies approach us to support them with system commissioning and start-up.

Business areas: balanced growth

IELAC operates across three main areas: electrical installations, mechanical installations, and maintenance and technical assistance. If you ask me which of these is currently the most significant, the honest answer is: none in particular, because all three are growing at a similar pace.

We are experiencing a strong period in construction, which is keeping electrical and mechanical installation activity at a high level, but we are also seeing significant growth in maintenance. More and more organisations — including public institutions that previously did not take this approach — are investing in preventive maintenance rather than waiting for equipment to fail. A decade ago, the answer would have been different; today, both sides of the business have reached a mature stage while continuing to grow steadily.

There are projects I am particularly proud of, especially the work we have carried out in hospital environments. We have successfully completed highly complex interventions, in some cases replacing entire technical units within 48 hours without causing any disruption to the hospital’s normal operations.

This requires very close coordination with those responsible for managing the institution, and it does not happen by chance: it is the result of the hard work and professionalism of our teams. This type of intervention — carried out with precision while ensuring that essential operations remain unaffected — best reflects how IELAC aims to position itself in the market.

The future: critical systems and intelligence at the service of energy

Looking ahead, there is an idea we have been developing internally: positioning IELAC as a company specialising in critical systems troubleshooting and resolution.

I am not referring to preventive maintenance, but rather to situations where a system stops working and no one can understand why. Often, a failure results from the combination of three or four different factors, and there is rarely someone capable of looking at the problem as a whole. It is like a complex surgical procedure: you need a team capable of bringing together all the pieces that no one can solve in isolation.

We already handle cases like these, with clients contacting us about problems that have nothing to do with work originally carried out by IELAC and that have persisted for a long time without a solution. Today, this is still the exception; our goal is to turn it into a business area in its own right — perhaps not one of significant scale, but certainly one with strong profitability and clearly differentiated value.

Another area we are closely monitoring is energy storage. Energy efficiency itself is already a mature field: photovoltaic systems, for example, are now accessible to virtually any company. Storage, however — whether electrical energy storage or thermal storage through ice banks produced overnight for daytime use — is still an area where investment payback periods are expected to decrease as the technology matures.

It is a trend we are following closely because energy costs are only likely to increase, and the ability to store energy intelligently will increasingly become a competitive advantage.

Then there is the integration of artificial intelligence into building management systems, which I consider one of the most interesting developments we will see over the coming years. It is not that artificial intelligence is “more intelligent” than a person; rather, it can simultaneously analyse a volume of variables that no human being could process alone.

Today’s building management systems are no longer limited to remotely switching equipment on and off, as they were a few years ago. They can now determine, for example, whether it is more efficient to switch off the air conditioning overnight by taking into account the energy required to restore the desired temperature the following morning.

They can also anticipate failures by cross-referencing consumption statistics with motor operating patterns, indicating that a particular piece of equipment has a certain probability of failing on a specific day. This allows us to act before the failure occurs rather than afterwards. In environments such as an operating theatre, that ability to anticipate a problem can make the difference between a surgery going ahead or being postponed.

This is also why national and European incentives are increasingly focused on bringing buildings closer to the nZEB (Nearly Zero Energy Building) concept, reducing energy consumption and the associated emissions. It is a direction in which we want to remain well positioned and ready to contribute.

The message that remains

Our sector has, and will continue to have, very strong conditions for growth. If we look back 30 years, special installations represented around 10 to 15% of the value of a construction project. Today, in some cases, they already account for more than 50%. It is a field that continues to grow faster than the construction sector on which it is built.

As for IELAC, the message I want to leave is simple: those who know us, know. They know the standards we work to, the technical capabilities of our teams and the responsibility with which we approach every project.

Sometimes, perhaps simply through lack of familiarity, we feel that people outside the company see us as just another company like any other. We are not — and we know that because our clients keep coming back to us, time and again.

If we sometimes turn down projects, it is not because we lack capacity, but because we understand our responsibility: we would rather deliver seven or eight projects exceptionally well than take on fourteen and compromise on quality. That is the identity we want to continue protecting and, ultimately, it is what will allow us to grow.