Donoso is still in college

By: Héctor Gómez Pérez

The stretch traveled by Eduardo Donoso Pérez, our Professional of the Month for Merconorte, to reach the presidency of Donoso e Hijos C. Ltda is full of experiences and journeys throughout Ecuador, his country of origin, and the United States, where he culminated a part of his professionalization. But let's start this story with the phrase with which all the stories begin: "once upon a time..."

Guayaquil, there it all began
Born on October 4, 1948, in Guayaqui, Ecuador, Eduardo Donoso received his basic education from the hand of the Salesians, his mechanical engineering studies were carried out at the Escuela Superior del Litoral (Espol), an entity to which he is still linked as a teacher of subjects related to air conditioning and refrigeration. His Master of Science degree was done at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, United States.

His first experience in the industry, before leaving for the United States, was in 1972 as a construction supervisor in a small air conditioning company: Intercambio y Crédito, in which he worked for two years. His dream of doing business crystallized in 1978 when in the company of the engineer Humberto Baquerizo, his great friend from school, he formed the company Donoso y Baquerizo Ingenieros, which operated until 2000 when Baquerizo separated from society. At that time our Professional of the Month constituted Eduardo Donoso e Hijos C. Ltda.

"I think that in some way whether designing, implementing the systems or auditing, we have participated in the main projects of this country. It is worth remembering that in terms of medium and large air conditioning projects, Guayaquil manages almost 70%, because due to its climate all buildings must have one of these systems. "

Currently, in addition to being the president of the company he founded in 2000, Donoso is the president of the Ecuadorian Technical Association of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (ATEAAR) and the Federation of Ibero-American Associations of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (FAIAR).

The HVAC/R Manager
Being the head of a leading company in the HVAC / R industry requires particular skills, according to Donoso one of them is to do things well, which in addition to guaranteeing customer satisfaction minimizes claims. He also pointed out that "a good manager must know how to reduce expenses without wasting transport, times and movements; whoever doesn't know how to do this will make your company deeply inefficient."

Donoso also stressed that when a work is large, it is required to have a superintendent who is organized, who executes the work plan, keeps compliance with the rules up to date and has a fluid communication with all the actors of the project.

Normally our guest arrives at his office at 7 a.m., with the exception of the days when he teaches class, when he arrives at work at 8 a.m. "I practice that if the worker sees him enter one early, he will have no choice but to do it too," Donoso said. His mornings are spent meeting with the company's financial manager to discuss money issues or serving clients on new or running projects. The rest of his day is dedicated to purely administrative tasks: signing documents or answering queries from the design department. Around 7:30 p.m. he ends his day and attends a coffee in the city, "there I meet with some friends, I de-stress having a cappuccino and listening to everyone's occurrences until about 8:30 p.m".

Very surely one of the stories that Donoso's friends have heard in those nights of gathering, was the one that happened more than 30 years ago when he was a beginner in the industry. "The anecdote that I remember most was in a hotel, about 30 years ago, to which we mounted the air conditioning system with ice water. Due to my inexperience I accepted the proposal made by a PVC pipe manufacturer to install the system with its accessories. On the day of the inauguration, the pipe in a junction failed, which caused a tremendous flood throughout the hotel, you can imagine the embarrassment," said Donoso.

Personally gifted
One of the reasons why Eduardo Donoso considers that he has not been able to lose weight is his taste for good food, a hobby that combines with his hobby for travel, Brazilian music, boleros, jazz and Puerto Rican and Cuban salsa.

His family consists of three sons: Roy Eduardo, 35 years old and an architect by profession; Ricardo Daniel, an economist, 33, and Adriana Valentina, a 25-year-old architect. His adorations are his three grandchildren: Sofía Isabel and Nicolás Alejandro (children of Roy Eduardo) and Felix Sebastián (son of Adriana). About his other hobbies our guest said the following: "I am an emelecista and as a good emelecista I do not like Barcelona at all (these are the two main football squads in Guayaquil). I watch baseball, a sport that I practiced without success in my youth, and especially football, the most exciting of sports and that consumes some of my hours of the night sitting in front of the TV. "

Industry, Ecuador and training
When asked about the air conditioning industry of his country, he considered that the import of equipment should be about 30 million dollars annually and said that the investment at present, of whatever kind, depends more on the assurances offered by the governments: "In the case of Ecuador I see that the government is doing a lot of social work, but unfortunately it does not give signs of confidence to the foreign investor. Latin America is immense and there are many unmet needs and quite a bit of construction to be done; cities must improve and when they improve more buildings are made. As long as the construction exists and the climate does not change, air conditioning will have its future assured," he said.

For Donoso, the air conditioning industry in Ecuador is still incipient and the manufacture of equipment and accessories is practically non-existent, perhaps due to the lack of market or the lack of government incentives.

For the Professional of the Month, his recognition in the industry is based on three pillars: perseverance, disinterest in teaching and in the attitude towards progress. "At my age I don't neglect researching new products, new applications, etc. I do not stop browsing the Internet and I have not lost the habit of buying engineering books and always being updated. In some applications and solutions I have been relatively lucky to live in the exact moment and to have been practically a pioneer in the use of certain equipment and accessories in HVAC installations," said Donoso.

Meanwhile our guest will continue with his morning classes in that house of formation from which he will hardly be separated, because as we said: "Donoso is still in the university", because he considers "that education is the only means that will make us get out of underdevelopment; that's why I insist so much to my students and collaborators to read, to find out about new technologies and to ask if they don't know," he said.

Finally, this guayaquileño wanted to thank in this article his family who has understood that "to succeed you have to work hard, because nothing is free in life and achievements are obtained pulse by pulse," he concluded.