Ingenio Magazine 44

On February 17, 55 years ago, Ayesa was established as a small engineering office in Seville. More than half a century of projects and great professionals have made the company today a multinational with a permanent presence in 17 countries and with projects in 40.

Ayesa celebrates its 55th anniversary During this journey there have been difficult moments, linked to the evolution of the markets, but if something characterizes Ayesa it is resilience, the desire to excel and evolution. And it has been precisely this spirit that has led the then small cabinet into a powerful engineering first and later into a large ETC (Engineering and Technology Consultancy) consultancy with 5,000 employees.

As José Luis Manzanares Japón, president of Ayesa, recalls, the firm “was born in the mind of the hydraulic engineer Mr. José María Rodríguez Gabás, as entertainment for his retirement”. In this way, the company started in 1966 with its first team and projected a dam and a channel.

The mathematical model of the Madrid water network in 1967 was “the miracle that has brought us here”, he points out, because since then Ayesa has always used software applied to engineering. In 1984 the staff reached thirty technicians and the company received its first international order: irrigation in Ecuador.

Upon returning from that trip, it was announced that Seville was going to host EXPO 92, a phenomenon that changed the destiny of engineering. ACT was founded in 1991, addressing new technologies and remote control. Despite the crisis of 1993, opportunities came with the new national highway plan “and we soon became road reference consultants and in 1997 high speed”.