Maximo Ibarra spoke today at the final event of the 6th edition of the Community Valore Acqua per l’Italia, organized by The European House – Ambrosetti. The CEO of Engineering, a partner of the event, participated in the panel “A Marshall Plan for Water Infrastructure,” alongside key representatives of Italian utilities. Concluding his speech, he remarked:

“Water is an essential resource for the country's growth and competitiveness, yet it is still managed with a fragmented approach and without a shared strategic vision. Despite the fact that 20% of GDP depends on water, there is still a lack, both at a political and industrial level, of an overarching vision that recognizes its role in the economy across all production, agricultural, and energy processes.

It is necessary to move beyond compartmentalized logic and adopt shared management models involving all stakeholders in the supply chain, based on data, digitalization, and targeted investments. Engineering is part of the Community Valore Acqua with the aim of sharing its expertise in digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twin, and Cloud, as well as Generative AI solutions like EngGPT, positioning itself as an enabler of strategies that foster more efficient, innovative, and sustainable water governance. Placed at the center of a technological ecosystem capable of integrating multiple solutions, Artificial Intelligence serves as a powerful driver to improve and evolve the water system, amplifying the knowledge and action potential of organizations and individuals. In this way, it is possible to create intelligent systems for monitoring consumption in data centers and hospitals, enabling precision irrigation in agriculture, and implementing water recovery and reuse solutions in industry.

Water is also one of the key focus areas of the Digital Alliance for Italy, which we are promoting to accelerate the country's digital transformation through an open platform involving institutions, businesses, and technology partners. Within this ambitious project, we are working to digitalize the entire water supply chain by improving the collection of public and private data generated by entities and structures managing the water sector. This will allow us to develop a data platform to collect consumption information from all water service providers, creating an open and public digital ecosystem.”

A leader in digitalization processes for companies and public administration, Engineering relies on over 1,000 specialists in the Energy & Utilities sector and serves more than 70 clients in the water industry, including the 8 largest service providers by number of users, covering over 60% of the Italian market. By integrating AI with cutting-edge technologies such as Digital Twin, IoT, and Cloud, the Group is carrying out projects across the country aimed at real-time water quality monitoring, optimizing aqueducts with significant reductions in water loss, improving interactions between service providers and users by offering citizens more accessible and transparent services, and reducing billing times.