It all starts with three questions. First. Why does it take so long to build? Second. Why can’t an installation be disassembled and moved to another site? Third. Why use such complicated materials to recycle as concrete? And, ultimately, a fourth, which brings them all together: Why is it still being built the same as it was 50 years ago? The answer, in the case of Tomás Feliu, Jordi Vinyoles and Jordi Lacambra, was to found Gaptek. “It is a company that designs, manufactures and builds buildings with innovative technology that transforms the construction process, improving time, costs and quality”, summarizes the director of the Madrid delegation, Salvador Allende.
It is not, however, just any company. First of all because of the process. Gaptek builds its buildings in pieces and from molds that it has patented. These parts, which are joined together wherever the construction is to be installed, are made in factories in Galicia, Italy and Saudi Arabia with which they have agreements and are distributed from the company’s logistics center in Porqueres (Girona). The pieces leave from this Catalan municipality inside containers between 20 and 40 feet high, measures that allow transport by truck or ship and, in an emergency, even by plane.
The latter is key for one of the company’s great clients: the army. And here lies the other great singularity of this Barcelona-based company, which apart from building office buildings or large surfaces such as hangars and warehouses, has carried out work for the Ministry of Defence Spanish, has built for NGOs, has expanded the Granollers Hospital during the worst time of the pandemic and has designed schools in the bedroom. Without forgetting the awards in international competitions promoted by NATO.
“We have made infrastructure for the Ministry of Defense such as hangars, warehouses, workshops, office buildings and up to two buildings for our Army in a location as demanding as Antarctica: a warehouse and a workshop,” he exemplifies. Allende. “Although we are a dual company, because our projects are valid for both the civil and military sectors, the defense sector represents a very important part of our business niche,” he justifies.
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This manager relates it to the fact that building in this way is much more sustainable, that the process greatly favors cost and time control, and that they are permanent but transferable constructions. “The different services of the Ministry of Defense have encountered the problem of closing military establishments and this fact has meant that traditional infrastructures have remained because they are anchored to the ground,” explains the director. “Our solution provides that plus of being able to change infrastructures, however large they may be, and at a negligible cost compared to a new infrastructure,” he continues.
The company, which is in the process of recovering from the drop in activity caused by the pandemic -before it invoiced approximately 20 million-, has a workforce of 50 people and plans to grow progressively in the coming years. “Although our buildings are beginning to be known, we are still in the phase of making our technology known because it is relatively new,” acknowledges the manager, who does not close any door to the future: “The fundamental idea is that we have a system with which we can do practically anything: hospitals, markets, schools… practically whatever is needed”, he concludes, insisting on the special interest they have in promoting sustainability and the circular economy.