ESTEYCO S.A.

I was born in Gernika on 27 September 1942, in a family with no background in engineering. My secondary education was obtained at the Jesuit's School of Bilbao and I did the university entrance examination at the School of Industrial Engineers. As I obtained good marks, I moved to Madrid to continue my degree at the School of Civil Engineering, from which I graduated in May 1966 at the age of 23.

I worked for two years in the design and construction of the bridges over the new channel of the river Turia in Valencia. I left this lucrative post to move with my wife and daughter to Paris, where I worked as an engineer in the design firm set up by Freyssinet. I participated in the design of many outstanding bridges and structures. A year later, at the age of 27, I returned to Madrid and founded Esteyco in January 1970.

During my stay in Paris I received—as a supplement to the salary I received in the firm where I was working—a grant from the Ministry of Education for training lecturers of schools of technology. However, on my return I found no openings in this area, so placed all my efforts in the work that came into our new engineering firm.

Today, 37 years later, Esteyco is one of the most prestigious engineering firms in a prosperous sector that was then practically non-existent. It has a staff of 110 professionals, most of them graduates, with a variety of backgrounds. Many of them have obtained a long experience working beside me for decades, and they are now collaborating with me to carry out the inevitable change of generation. We have permanent offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Malaga.

In around 1975, Professor Batanero, with whom I had collaborated occasionally, asked me to work in his Chair of Bridges and Metal Structures at the School of Civil Engineering of Madrid. I was an associate lecturer there for 17 years. Though the official time that I devoted to teaching was limited, I think I was a lecturer who left his mark. In fact, I ended up directing a subject that proved to be one of the most popular among the students. I wrote specific notes and exercises for the subject and prepared the classes with interest and dedication.

In around 1991 I left the School. There were already sufficient lecturers who were able to teach the subject and who had a greater academic vocation than myself. I learned a lot by teaching and I believe that in my classes, which were often attended by 200 students, I transmitted my knowledge and enthusiasm for an essential profession in which I would continue to contribute to the life expectancy and quality of life of human beings.
For many years I was a member of the European Concrete Committee—the prestigious CEB. I participated in the drawing up of the highly important Model Code of 1991, as a member of Commission IV, Member Design and Commission VI, Detailing. I was also the official Spanish representative on the team that drew up of the Eurocode 4 on Composite Structures, alongside outstanding figures in this relatively new branch of knowledge.

While I was still a young man living in Madrid, I attended several specialised seminars, particularly in France. I also attended one in New York, where I was able to discover the state of the art in the subject of prestressed slabs with unbonded tendons in building construction, a technology that was widely used in the United States but unknown in Spain. Later, with articles and lectures and with pioneering projects, I helped to disseminate this technology in Spain. I took advantage of my international contacts to promote the presence of outstanding engineers in Spain and to promote new topics. Thus, perhaps for the first time, Prof. Schlaich joined us at the Eduardo Torroja Institute. So did Dr. Regan, a specialist in shearing and shear failure, and Prof. Clifford, who has been president of the American Post-Tensioning Institute, and Dr. Aalami, who holds a chair at the University of California. I was also an active member of the European Convention for Constructional Steelwork (ECCS) and took an active part in several international meetings with lecturers of the category of Pierre Dubas and René Maquoi, with whom I had an excellent personnel and professional relationship. In 1992, Prof. Jöel Raoul, today Chairman of EC4, worked as a guest in our office for two weeks. I was a lecturer in Paris of a specialised course on Eurocode 3 at the School of Civil Engineering, on the personal invitation of Prof. Maquoi. I have been an active member of the Scientific Committee of the IABSE Congress in Prague and I have presented papers at several international meetings (Lülea, IABSE, etc.).

In 1987 I received the medal of the Spanish Technical Association for Prestressing (ATEP) for my contribution to the development of prestressed concrete in Spain and in 1992 the medal of the National Association of Civil Engineers for professional merit. For several years I was also an honorary lecturer at the School of Civil Engineering of UPC.

I was the first elected member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering and in 1998 I read my induction speech, entitled “Structural aphorisms that may be of use to understand certain behaviours of human beings”, in which I expressed my professional ideology perhaps better than in any other text.

Between 1992 and 1994 I was chairman of ASINCE, the Spanish Association of Consulting Engineers, which was in turn a member of the International Associations FIDIC, EFCA and FEPAC.

I have given countless lectures in Spain and some in other countries (France, Uruguay and Argentina). I have played an active part in countless congresses, seminars and courses on structures and, in recent years, on the environment or related to engineering and architecture.

I drew up the first Spanish Recommendations for the Design of Steel and Composite Bridges (RPM-95 and RPX-95), and the Manual for the Application of these Recommendations, which were published by the Ministry of Development and are commonly used by Spanish professionals. I also wrote a Guide to the Design of Integral Bridges, which has become a reference work. I supervised the writing of a set of Technological Guides for the Directorate-General for Roads and I personally wrote the one on Bridges.

In 1991 I set up the Esteyco Foundation for the progress of Engineering and Architecture, which annually publishes several highly selected books, including the biographies of Carlos Fernández Casado, Javier Manterola, and architects such as Antonio Fernández Alba and Julio Cano Lasso. One of these books, published in Spanish and Catalan (as others have been published in bilingual editions: Euskera-Spanish, French-Spanish or English-Spanish), deals specifically with Railway Geometries (Las geometrías del tren). Last Christmas we published one on Railway Bridges (Puentes del Tren) by José Serna.

Within the Foundation we have also organised many Events related to both Engineering and Architecture, which have met with a good reception and have been attended by 100 to 300 participants.

Esteyco has also led the creation of innovative companies and promoted their development. These include Knosos, Kinesia, Wasser and Inneo.

For Inneo (Innovaciones Eólicas, or Wind Innovations), a firm of professionals that we created and of which we form part, we have developed a prototype of a prefabricated wind tower of structural concrete for heights of 80 to 140 m and generators of 1.5 to 5.0 Mw, for which patents and utility models have been taken out in several countries. Acciona Energy has joined this project, for which an 80 m prototype has already been built. Work has started on the industrial manufacture of the unique Alejandría model, created to respond to a world-wide need in a sector that is undergoing extraordinary expansion.

There are also many engineers who, with the experience acquired by working with us, have obtained a knowledge and prestige that have allowed them to set up their own firms or orient their professional work.

Though this is important, it is merely the consequence of the policy on which Esteyco's operations have been based, from its origins over 36 years ago, which can be summarised by the motto: Work to know, know to work. As a corollary, it shows the importance of training and acquisition of knowledge by all who work at Esteyco because, like all engineering firms, our real asset is our human capital.

I have devoted my whole life to being an engineer in the firm that I created, which is mine and that of all those who, working beside me, share my professional concerns. I have participated actively in many of the almost one thousand projects and studies that we have carried out in our 36 years of existence as an organisation. Furthermore, I have created a professional culture that has influenced the development of the projects in which I have not been directly involved. There are traces of my work in the whole of Spain and in some other countries (France, Bulgaria, Uruguay, Algeria and Iran). Many bridges of structural concrete, steel and composite materials have been built as we designed them. Many foundations and structures of important buildings have also been built with our collaboration. We have collaborated with many architects of deserved renown. Some of these works are presented graphically in the references that we have prepared specifically for this Proposal. It has always been our aim that our interventions should respect the environment and integrate in a humanised landscape through our work. From the beginning we have fostered multidisciplinary work, which we consider essential in order to deal with the complexity of the problems we face, and we have avoided partial or limited approaches. It is therefore natural that among the over one hundred professionals who form our human team—in addition to the many graduates in civil engineering and public works—there are architects of great worth, and highly experienced geologists, biologists, physicists, technical architects, human resources experts, designers and draftsmen.