For decades, many ship pilots passing under the silhouette of the new Waterloo Bridge on the Thames would call it “the women’s bridge.” The original London bridge was demolished at the gates of World War II.
Legend had it that, in the absence of male labor, it was a large majority of women who were responsible for dismantling (and rebuilding) it. Unfortunately, the original construction company went bankrupt, and with it all records were lost. It was not until 2015 that the true history of the bridge was confirmed.
It took historian Christine Wall’s tireless work to bring irrefutable evidence of female participation in the infrastructure – photographs showing several female welders working on the bridge. It is believed that up to 65% of the workforce on the site were women.
Fortunately, this remarkable record has been beaten again years later, thousands of miles away and in an even more ambitious infrastructure. The endeavor is São Paulo’s Metro Line 6 - Orange, a spectacular project executed by ACCIONA, which, at 9.5 miles long, is the largest infrastructure under construction in Brazil.
Today, 70% of the workforce at its Segment Factory is female. These concrete segments support a structure that could well be nicknamed “the women’s tunnel.” They are the symbol of ACCIONA’s commitment to integrating women in the construction sector and generating a positive impact on the communities where we operate. Read on to learn about the details of this monumental work.
When a project of the scale of Line 6 - Orange is undertaken in one of the most populated metropolitan areas in the world, it is impossible to overlook its social impact. São Paulo is home to 12.3 million people from diverse social backgrounds. More than 635,000 people will use this new artery that will connect the city from north to south.
But ACCIONA’s goal when designing the construction of this infrastructure is that, just as the train travels unnoticed beneath the surface, improving the city’s communications, many other people will also benefit from the projects developed in parallel to its route. Leaving a zero-carbon footprint and, at the same time, enduring social legacy in terms of inclusion, diversity, employability, and social impact.
ACCIONA’s goal is leaving an enduring social legacy in terms of inclusion, diversity, employability, and social impact.
But that is not enough: to employ women, it is essential to design a work environment from a female perspective. For this reason, ACCIONA has set up mother’s rooms at the Segment Factory to accommodate breastfeeding workers. Likewise, the project has been conceived as a long-term training project for them.
Thus, of the 500 women hired globally for the project, 300 are on the work front. Many who have no experience in civil construction have received training with certifications in positions such as mechanical assistants, welders, oxy-fuel welding specialists, or electricians. That training enables them to continue their work and apply their knowledge in other civil construction projects in the future.
At ACCIONA , we have approached the impact of this gigantic engineering project as a series of concentric circles. The first of these begins at the construction site, but its influence extends to other spheres. This is the philosophy of the “ACCIONA por Ellas” (ACCIONA for women) program: to go beyond construction and improve the employability of vulnerable women.
Based on socioeconomic studies, this program established that women are the financial support of their households and showed their difficulty in finding a job because they have not completed their education or, in some cases, have not even started it. Thus, as part of the social responsibility of Line 6, four projects were created that leave a positive legacy, totaling more than 200 beneficiaries so far:
The other concentric circle refers to the metro’s usefulness as a link to a world of opportunities. When this transport service begins its activity, it will be an enabler for all these women to be connected and find more options to access the labor market.
In the project for the construction of the new São Paulo subway line, we seek to inspire and bring the project closer to the children and youth community. Here the participation from the construction site is crucial – women and men who become an example to follow in areas such as Environment, Occupational Health, and Safety, or Engineering and Production, among others.
Through different visits to classrooms as ambassadors to transfer their knowledge, children and young people learn how to deal with safety at work, reduce environmental impact, plan a construction site, or identify the technologies involved in each process, as well as professional guidance with gender equality. More than 2,700 students have already benefited from the initiative.
Our experts, who come from the site, act as knowledge ambassadors for younger students.
How do we achieve that a work of the magnitude of this metro line has a positive impact in environmental terms? Embracing the circular economy is one of the keys. The starting point is the use of resources. To do this, we start by making our teams aware of the importance of recycling. Still, at the same time, we stress the economic benefits of these practices and of implementing the European Taxonomy criteria. This means working closely with the local recycling population, making the on-site generated materials available, and thus developing economically sustainable activities.
In this South American construction project, the EU taxonomy criteria are met and, thanks to a regenerative approach, the trees of Line 6 will not be planted in the surroundings of the infrastructure. Instead, most of them will be planted in an area defined by the Concesionaria Linha Universidade in the city of Campinas. As part of the replacement, some trees have already been planted in permanent preservation areas to preserve springs and maintain the ciliary forest (the ciliary forest is an indispensable part of the vegetation that remains on the banks of watercourses for the maintenance of the ecosystem’s biodiversity).
Once the project is completed, there will be more trees in the area than at the beginning, with 2,000 trees planned as part of the line’s landscaping project. The recovered area has been increased to 13,481 hectares.
Excavating a subway line is a task linked to soil and water. What to do with the water found when the excavation reaches the water table? The first strategy is to reuse it for concrete production, in addition to treating it for use in everyday tasks. We also reduce consumption by collecting rainwater and washing equipment with closed-circuit water systems.
Water is reused, but so is the earth: ACCIONA uses the excavated soil to regenerate an area at Cava de Carapicuíba, a former mining operation with disused land – new fertile farmland and habitable areas where only the scars of mining once existed.
In the year 2025, there will be millions of people using this new subway line in São Paulo every day, but there will also be a generation of women and school students who will remember its construction as the opportunity for a new life.
Thanks to this ACCIONA program to support the incorporation of female professionals on wind farms, there are more and more women engineers working in maintenance jobs at facilities in the Isthmus region of Mexico.
