Engineering and Workshops

Innovation in public service management and efficiency.

In the 1920s, the industrial organisation of workshop labour at the country’s largest railway company, CP – Companhia dos Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses, underwent profound changes. This resulted from the introduction of modern work organisation techniques and new sources of energy for the workshop, machinery and lighting.

As the workshop’s layout and productivity changed, it became necessary to properly train the workers for their new duties. To secure this skilled workforce, CP promoted the creation of training schools: schools for Apprentices, Foremen and Brigade Chiefs, as well as schools for Engine Drivers and Firemen.

At the same time, it planned and organised working visits, also known as study missions, to European railway companies and, from the 1930s onwards, extended these to the USA.
There was a particular focus on rolling stock, and the mission comprised senior company staff (administrators, division and service directors) as well as workshop foremen and assistant foremen.

These technical visits created a critical mass essential for the definition and implementation of new innovative and modern solutions in the national railway sector, which led Engineer Almeida e Castro, in the book "Towards a History of the Railway in Portugal, vol. 5, CP – Comboios de Portugal, Material e Tracção, Os Caminhos de Ferro Portugueses nos anos 1940/70, Lisbon, 2006‘, to highlight ’the fact that we worked on concepts that only decades later would be presented by the automotive industry’s marketing as the latest innovations."

Driven by Cabinet Resolution No. 110/2019 of 27 June – which set out the strategic guidelines for the revitalisation of CP’s passenger rail service, the restoration of service levels in the short term and the development and sustainability of the company in the medium and long term – there has also been a significant improvement in CP’s operational and functional capacity and, consequently, in the effectiveness of the public service the company provides to the country.