Brazilian engineering is going through the biggest crisis in its history. Companies with recognized technical capacity, with a significant contribution in works and services for our engineering, are paralyzed due to the legal processes to which they are responding. We have seen the destruction of our largest engineering companies. The professionals, especially their engineers, were dismissed by the thousands, the works were suspended, while waiting to see to what extent these companies would be affected by the penalties of Operation Lava Jato. The Bolsonaro government's decision to open Brazil to the entry of foreign companies contributes to destroying the already weakened engineering companies and favoring the employment of engineering professionals from abroad to the detriment of the jobs of many Brazilian engineers. The damage to Brazil and to Brazilian engineering is undeniable.

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THE ANIQUILATION OF BRAZILIAN ENGINEERING
Fernando Alcoforado*
The impact of Brazil's economic crisis on national engineering has been devastating since
2014. The crisis led 253 contractors to bankruptcy (bankruptcy) in 2015, the number of
which grew by 25% compared to 2014. The bankruptcy process of contractors resulted
from the reduction of infrastructure works and delays in payment of invoices by the
federal, state and municipal governments. The cuts in the public budget contributed
decisively to increase the requests for judicial reorganization of the contractors. The
growth in requests for judicial reorganization reflects the country's economic crisis, the
lack of credit and the increase in interest rates. Large construction companies stopped
receiving and caused a ripple effect among smaller subcontracted companies. The civil
construction sector in Brazil was affected, not only by delays in transfers from the
government, but also by Operation Lava Jato, which took a number of companies
involved in Petrobras' corruption scheme to the courts, especially the large construction
companies. Indebted, without credit in the market and with contracts canceled or
suspended, several companies followed this path to renegotiate debts.
The Brazilian civil construction market is experiencing an unprecedented crisis. The
sector's profitability dropped from 11.2% in 2013 to 2.3% in 2014. Only three of the 23
construction companies ranked among the 500 largest in the country managed to grow in
2014. Odebrecht, the largest of them, fell 32 % in sales. In 2014, the civil construction
sector was responsible for about 6.5% of the country's Gross Domestic Product and
directly employed more than 3 million people. The debts of contractors that exceed R$
150 billion can also lead the country's main banks to losses that, in turn, will further
restrict the granting of credit. Odebrecht alone had R$ 98.5 billion in debt in 2019. Due
to Lava Jato Operation, contractors encounter legal restrictions on bidding. Petrobras, the
main client of the contractors investigated at Lava-Jato Operation, predicted to cut about
30% of investments by 2019. Without cash and without new contracts, the last resort of
these companies was to enter into judicial recovery to renegotiate debts.
Odebrecht, the largest Brazilian engineering company, was destroyed by Lava Jato
Operation . The largest Brazilian construction company loses successive contracts abroad,
faces tremendous credit difficulties in Brazil and abroad, faces political discrimination
and loses the most elementary conditions to establish a strategy to overcome the crisis.
The number of workers, mostly in quality jobs and with good salaries has drastically
reduced, while intermediate executives, with different areas of specialization that in the
past represented the soul of the company's entrepreneurial creativity, are totally
disoriented and without initiative. Odebrecht is gradually disappearing in a process of
inexorable degradation. This is the biggest national engineering disaster of all time. It is
a disaster without equal for the Brazilian economy.
The share of major works in the GDP of Brazilian construction decreased from 41.3% to
29.5% in ten years. The decline reflects the end of a cycle of expansion of infrastructure
in the country. The data are part of the Annual Survey of the Construction Industry
(PAIC), released by the Brazilian Institute of Statistical Geography (IBGE), which
mapped the sector between 2007 and 2016. In 2012, at the height of the economic
expansion in the 21st century, investment in infrastructure totaled R$ 67.04 billion, more
than three times that of 2016. In the past five years, the Brazilian economy has slowed

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down. The recession generated by the Dilma Rousseff government and the inaction to
reactivate the Brazilian economy under the Bolsonaro government contributed to the fall
in investments affecting all sectors, mainly the construction industry. With less money,
large construction companies being dismantled by Lava-Jato Operation and stopped
works, in addition to other conjunctural factors, the civil construction market suffered
negative numbers for the fifth consecutive year.
In 2017, the decline in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of civil construction was 6%. By
the end of 2017, Engineers were the top-level professionals who lost the most jobs in the
private sector. With the crisis and the departure of so many qualified labor from the sector,
there was an avalanche of opening of micro companies to provide engineering services,
which made the economic environment even more competitive, leading to a degradation
of earnings for established companies and consolidated. The current balance sheet in the
civil construction sector points to the existence of 14,000 stopped works and more than
50,000 unemployed engineers
It is important to note that Brazilian Engineering is a fundamental part in the effort to
promote the resumption of the country's economic growth, given that, through it, it will
be possible to overcome Brazil's weaknesses in economic and social infrastructure. The
country will have to invest an additional R$ 2 trillion to achieve investments in the
infrastructure sector of 4% of GDP, the minimum necessary to reach a reasonable level
of modernization. According to the Institute of Logistics and Supply Chain, the necessary
investments in Brazil in ports (R$ 42.9 billion), railways (R$ 130.8 billion) and highways
(R$ 811.7 billion) total R$ 985.4 billion. Adding this amount to the necessary investments
in waterways and river ports (R$ 10.9 billion), airports (R$ 9.3 billion), electricity sector
(R$ 293.9 billion), oil and gas (R$ 75.3 billion), basic sanitation (R$ 270 billion) and
telecommunications (R$ 19.7 billion) total R $1,664.5 billion.
In Brazil, the education sector requires investments of R$ 83 billion a year, health care
R$ 54 billion a year and popular housing requires R$ 68 billion to eliminate the housing
deficit. Adding the total investment required in economic infrastructure (energy, transport
and communications) as well as social infrastructure (education, health, basic sanitation
and housing) would total R$ 1,869.5 billion, that is, almost R$ 2 trillion. The economic
and social infrastructure program that may be adopted in the short term could achieve
these objectives. Brazilian engineering would certainly be rebuilt with the execution of
this infrastructure program.
The uplift of Brazilian engineering should also include the adoption of measures that
make the Brazilian justice in its fight against corruption seek to penalize corrupt people,
businessmen and executives and not attack companies, as if legal entities had the human
quality of virtue and sin. It is necessary to prevent the national legal system from
destroying Brazilian companies responsible for the generation of hundreds of thousands
of jobs and for the accumulation of engineering knowledge unparalleled in the world, and
with high international competitive capacity. Unfortunately, the federal government did
not create a recovery plan that would help engineering companies get out of the crisis.
Even with the signing of leniency agreements, there is no resumption of works, and the
loss has already reached more than R$ 50 billion.
What is being done in Brazil with engineering companies in Brazil is not occurring in
other countries that act against corruption as happened with Volkswagen in Germany in

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2018 in the case “Dieselgate” that defrauded pollution data from its cars and was applied
€ 1 billion fine while company officials were fired and arrested. At Volkswagen, no car
has ceased to be produced and no worker has lost his job. Germany was able to preserve
its wealth and jobs. In Brazil, the behavior has been the opposite. Business leaders are
arrested, works are suspended, companies are prevented from participating in other
tenders and workers are dismissed by the thousands. A national heritage made up of
companies formed over decades and holding an important technological collection and
teams of experienced professionals is destroyed. This needs to end.
It can be said that Brazilian engineering is experiencing the greatest crisis in its history.
Companies with recognized technical capacity, with a significant contribution in works
and services for our engineering, are paralyzed due to the legal processes to which they
are responding. We have seen the destruction of our largest engineering companies. The
professionals, especially their engineers, were dismissed by the thousands, the works
were suspended, while waiting to see to what extent these companies would be affected
by the penalties of Lava Jato Operation. Large-scale projects were interrupted, some
already in an advanced stage of execution, such as the works of COMPERJ, Angra III,
the nuclear powered submarine, the Abreu e Lima refinery in the Northeast, the
transposition of the São Francisco River and many others. The losses already reach tens
of billions of Reais and unemployment for 13 millions of workers.
While the dismantling of Brazilian engineering by Operation Lava Jato is taking place,
the Bolsonaro government takes the decision to allow foreign companies to compete in
tenders and be government suppliers without the need to have a Brazilian branch in
infrastructure works. Currently, the country's legislation requires that a company or even
an individual legally represent the foreign company, in order to participate in public
bidding. The Bolsonaro government's decision to open Brazil to the entry of foreign
companies contributes to destroying the already weakened engineering companies and
favoring the employment of engineering professionals from abroad to the detriment of
the jobs of many Brazilian engineers. The damage to Brazil and to Brazilian engineering
is undeniable. Bolsonaro's attitude shows the antinational character of his government.
The argument that competition is healthy for Brazil is fallacious because it brings losses
to the country. If the infrastructure works are carried out by foreign companies, the profits
from their activities are remitted abroad, not staying in the host country (Brazil) and a
large part of the qualified labor is contracted abroad to the detriment of national workers.
With this measure, the Bolsonaro government collaborates with the strategy of the great
capitalist powers, especially in the United States, which strengthen their own engineering
and their largest companies and seek to sabotage the companies and engineering of other
countries as is the case today in Brazil. Brazilian Engineering was impaired by Lava Jato
Operation and is being annihilated by this last measure adopted by the Bolsonaro
government. Brazilian engineering is being destroyed thanks to the surrender to
international capital and the current government's neoliberal economic orthodoxy.
In any minimally advanced country, engineering is protected and respected as a synonym
for prosperity and a factor of development. There is no country that has reached a high
level of development without sovereign and decisively supporting its engineering.
Without engineering, the Soviet Union would not have sent the first artificial satellite,
Sputnik, to Earth's orbit, nor did Yuri Gagarin's feat as the first man to travel through
space and the United States would not have promoted the expedition to the Moon.

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Without engineering , the United States would not have built its bridges and skyscrapers
and Brazil would not have built its gigantic hydroelectric plants like Itaipu, implanted its
industrial park and developed oil exploration in deep waters like the Pre Salt. There are
no nations worthy of the name that be able to answer questions like where to go, how to
go, when to go, without the help of your engineering.
In the face of all this, we cannot do more than communicate the annihilation of Brazilian
engineering, famous for having built works all over the world, from highways to railways
and irrigation systems; going through the drilling of galleries and tunnels under the Andes
mountains; for the development of continuous concrete cooling systems for the
construction of Itaipu; or for the construction of huge hydroelectric plants and for the
development of technology for oil exploration in deep waters without which the Pre Salt
would not exist. Brazilian engineering is being destroyed, with the closure of its project
detailing offices, its goods industry capital, its shipyards for assembling ships and oil
platforms, the rising cost and cutting of its credit lines, the sale of its assets in the Souls
Basin and the abandonment of its construction sites.
The current moment is serious. In order to overcome it, there is an urgent need for a great
mobilization of the entities representing engineering professionals under the leadership
of the CONFEA / CREA System, Engineering Clubs and Institutes in order to build a
great alliance in defense of national engineering in which engineers, workers in general,
the union movement participate, as well as universities and technological centers.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System,
member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional
Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of
strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the
books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os
condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora
Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos
na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social
Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG,
Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica,
Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate
ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores
Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo
e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As
Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba,
2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua
convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro
para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).