Luis Baz, Director ACCIONA Engineering

An intrepid traveler who inherited his sense of adventure from his family, Luis Baz also loves to play rugby and other outdoor sports. A civil engineer from Madrid, he joined Iberinsa in 1993, the company merging with AEPO and eventually ending up as ACCIONA Engineering. After brief passage through the Madrid offices, where one job he worked on involved the replacement of steam turbine-generators at the Almaraz nuclear facility, Luis traveled abroad for 18 uninterrupted years, working on diverse projects such as the building of the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Fiumicino Airport expansion in Rome and a WWTP south of Milan. He then headed to El Salvador for 12 years, responsible for the launch of ACCIONA’s engineering business in Latin America. Since August 2012, he is back in Madrid, leading a strategic area in ACCIONA.

You went to El Salvador, not the easiest of countries to work in…

Yes, and I was there 12 years. Personally speaking, it was a fantastic experience and I had no problem. My sons were born there. They are in Spain now but they still distinguish between Salvadorans and Spanish. I think it is very enriching for one’s life. Countries as different as Malaysia, Italy and El Salvador also give you great flexibility and capacity to adapt.

Where would you most like to be?

Where I am at any moment. Is that pragmatic? I don’t know. I feel that I am optimistic by nature and I’m good wherever I am. You have to take the positives and virtues of each place in all circumstances.

“We took pleasure as a family in traveling and seeing different realities”

ACCIONA Engineering operates in many countries. Would you consider yourself to be a great traveler?

Yes, and not only for work. My parents infused me with the joy of traveling. We took pleasure as a family in traveling and seeing different realities, developed a kind of rootlessness in the best sense of the word. I would say traveling with the family is one of my main loves in life. The last trip we did together, in the Xmas holidays, was to Benin. It was not an obvious destination, but it’s a peaceful place and we wanted to give our sons the new experience of a family traveling in a continent such as Africa.

As well as traveler, you are a sportsman.

I do a lot of sport, mainly long-distance — triathlon, fell running, cycling. I sincerely believe that, of the training I have received, languages and sports have best served my development. They have been character forming.

And you play rugby.

I did when I was young. In Spain, I played between the ages of 15 and 20, and then I went back to playing at 40 in El Salvador. I was with an Argentine and two French ex-players. We founded the Salvadoran Rugby Federation from scratch. They had never seen a rugby ball in El Salvador.

ACCIONA Engineering reinvents itself for growth