Meet the Ordem dos Arquitetos

The Ordem dos Arquitetos (OA) is the Portuguese public association for architects and architecture.

We had a conversation with architects Avelino Oliveira and António Laúndes, from the Board of Directors, about the 12-year relationship with INESC TEC. This joint endeavour led to six service provision contracts, towards advancing the OA services.

What is the history of collaboration between the Ordem and INESC TEC? 

The collaboration between the Ordem dos Arquitetos (OA) and INESC TEC dates back more than 10 years. This partnership was developed within the scope of the Ordem’s actions in Portugal, towards combining academic technological research with the operational innovation of our services. Since then, we’ve developed many solutions, like the Portal do Arquiteto, which ensures the management of professional qualifications and other documents, as well as innovative digital tools, like the digital voting platform – e-vote. This path translates into a collaborative process that combines technological innovation, leading to major results for our institution. 

What are the main results of this long-standing collaboration? 

Concerning the main results, we’d like to highlight the development of the Portal do Arquiteto, which promotes the adequate connection between the different technological tools of the OA (member manager platform and Primavera), later evolving towards the development of the digital voting platform. Both situations represented a major digitalisation and dematerialisation leap, concerning the entity’s whole archive of documents. More recently, this collaboration focused on mapping the technological infrastructures of the Ordem and the main needs, with INESC TEC becoming an essential partner – by providing specialised consultancy to manage technological services provided by external companies, ensuring the efficiency and quality of the solutions adopted, and updating the Portal do Arquiteto (now with an updated and more robust version). 

How do you rate your experience with INESC TEC? 

Our experience has been quite positive. The team has demonstrated highly qualified technical resources, a vast knowledge in the areas involved and a great availability to meet our needs. This collaboration has been important to position ourselves as an advanced and reliable institution when it comes to technological processes. 

What do you value the most in this collaboration? 

We’d like to emphasise the knowledge and technical skills of the INESC TEC team, combined with a constant restlessness that challenges us to continuously evolve. In addition, the reliability of the systems developed is a key feature, as it ensures that our members trust the services provided – which are safe, fast and effective. 

If you had to highlight one major result, what would that be? 

One of the most impactful results was the implementation of the Balcão Virtual (an internal online and back-office secretariat service) that is already part of the daily lives of our members, especially whenever they need to interact with different services provided by the Ordem dos Arquitetos. This tool is vital to architectures, allowing them, for instance, to obtain all required documents to include in their projects. At the same time, it allows the licensing entities to validate the authenticity of those same documents. The collaboration enabled the integration of payment devices and quota management, the exchange of information, and the access to a database that supports direct and up-to-date communication. Finally, the interoperability with the professional card, combined with the official signature, represents a milestone in terms of the quality of the services provided by the OA.