The « tech guardians » of infrastructures
February 13, 2023
Italy’s extraordinary ability in building infrastructures, starting from the unmatched record of the ancient Romans, is known throughout the world. What is less known is Italy’s global leadership in monitoring dams, tunnels, bridges, railways, skyscrapers, and mines, which is embodied today by Sisgeo, a company based in Masate in the hinterland of Milan, founded by Romano Lamperti and Domenico Bruzzi. The company, which has just celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, now ranks among the top five global groups in the design, production, and installation of precision instruments for monitoring civil engineering and geotechnical works in progress and in operation. Sisgeo’s cutting-edge instruments, such as piezometers, inclinometers, pendulums, readout units, dataloggers, and others, combine the Italian manufacturing tradition with the most advanced technologies. Paradoxically, however, they are applied and appreciated mainly abroad due to the hyper-bureaucracy and slowness that dominate the authorization processes in our country.
Impressive is the list of countries and mega-projects in which Sisgeo is currently involved. In Europe, for example, there is the Grand Paris Express construction site, the largest urban connection network, mostly underground, connecting the French capital to its hinterland. Sisgeo provides the tools for measuring the excavations and the interferences they generate with everything on the surface. In the UK, Sisgeo is instead involved in the HS2 high-speed construction site: exclusive devices were used to monitor the behavior of the terrain, through special sensors capable of detecting both horizontal displacement and vertical settling, in the section between London and Birmingham. Between Italy and France, there is the mega-construction site of the Torino-Lyon high-speed railway, while in the heart of Italy, Sisgeo is active on the complex construction site of the Metro C in Rome. With their projects, the men and women of Sisgeo are the « tech guardians » of infrastructures. Yet, there is a « weak link » in this well-oiled machine that brings together people and technologies, and that is the shortage of qualified personnel. This is the current (and even more future) emergency of the « made in Italy » manufacturing industry, an emergency that, however, the Italian system has not yet decided to deal with.
Original article in italian: https://www.quotidiano.net/economia/impreseitaliane/i-guardiani-tech-delle-infrastrutture-1.8524210/amp