The concept of public works and engineering heritage includes a whole set of communication and energy transport infrastructures, as well as those aimed at optimizing industrial production that have been fundamental to the development of human societies. Very diverse works, from roads, railways, navigation channels and port facilities, from drinking water and sanitation pipes to electricity generation facilities, which have had the capacity to structure inhabited territories and, therefore, to transform the way we work, live and move. The first examples of public works are found in the first historical civilizations but they reach a moment of plenitude during the Roman Empire to become, within the contemporary stage, an essential factor in the sense of material progress and modernity.
