Gael Valdivieso · AI Automation Consultant

I ship AI systems that pay for themselves. Not slide decks.

Final-year Engineering & Management student at the University of Exeter, graduating July 2027, and founder of Cresco, an independent automation consultancy with real, paid deployments in Ecuador.

5
shipped projects, real clients
$13K/yr
role not backfilled, thanks to the system
~80h/mo
manual data work automated away
20%
operating cost cut on a factory line
Selected work

Case files

01 – 05 · ordered by impact
01
AI-assisted platform · in production
$13,000/yr
position cost removed
~13×
ROI over project fee
2 months
live and still running

AI-Assisted Maintenance Platform: Imprenta Mariscal

Problem

The person responsible for maintenance (tracking, reporting, staying on top of everything) resigned, leaving a lot of loose operational threads with no owner.

Solution

I built a maintenance request-tracking PWA (Next.js, FileMaker Data API, Supabase) with generative AI wired into four real friction points: photo-based damage classification, voice-note transcription and cleanup, structured close-out report extraction, and quote/PDF data extraction. All AI calls use structured outputs (JSON Schema) to guarantee parseable results, with a human reviewing and confirming every output. No autonomous agent, no memory between calls: targeted AI inside a deterministic app that also handles routing, notifications, and sync.

Impact

The factory has run its maintenance workflow for two months in production without backfilling the vacant coordination role, avoiding roughly $13,000/yr in salary cost, about 13× ROI on what I charged to build it.

Next.js 16FileMaker Data APISupabase Auth + RLSOpenAI gpt-4o-minigpt-4o-transcribeStructured Outputs (JSON Schema)ResendWeb PushPWA
02
Full web app · daily use
Real-time
operational answers
Per-branch
access, enforced by RLS
0
manual Excel reviews left

Torre de Control: Grupo Entregas Logistics, Ecuador

Problem

The operation delivering bank cards had no real-time visibility into which shipments were stuck. Someone had to open every delivery point's daily Excel ("Punto CLON") by hand and scan colour-coded pivot sheets for trouble.

Solution

I built a full operational web panel (not an Excel sheet or a no-code dashboard) that answers, live: is the operation healthy today? Which shipments need follow-up right now? Which points are worst? A shipment is flagged at risk automatically when it goes 2+ days with no status change, or never left for delivery.

Impact

Replaces the daily manual Excel review per delivery point. Access is segmented by security (Row Level Security) instead of emailing the whole sheet to everyone. In real daily use.

Next.js 16TypeScriptTailwind v4shadcn/uiSupabase · PostgresAuth + RLSRechartsexceljsCloudflare Email RoutingCloudflare Worker (own code)Verceln8n (evaluated, rejected)
03
Guided assistant · in production
4 banks
rule sets unified
18 / 18
rule combinations tested
1–3
questions to a full checklist

Delivery Assistant: Digital Field Instructions

Problem

Couriers delivering cards for four different banking clients (Banco Pacífico, Produbanco, Banco Bolivariano, Cooperativa JEP) had to memorise a long physical manual with different rules per bank: which documents to request, which signatures, which critical warnings.

Solution

A step-by-step assistant, built as one self-contained HTML/CSS/JS file with no external libraries, that guides the courier through 1–3 simple questions and produces the exact checklist: documents, required signatures, warnings (e.g. "deliver to the account holder only"), and what to upload to internal systems. All business logic came from the company's real manual, nothing invented. Where the original manual was ambiguous, the output says "verify in manual" instead of guessing.

Impact

Validated against all 18 possible rule combinations. Now in active use by couriers across all 4 banking accounts and all 39 delivery locations.

In production · 4 banking accounts · 39 locations
04
VBA automation · in production
~80 h/mo
of one person's manual work removed
1 macro
replaces the whole cleanup step

Excel Data Cleaning Automation: Grupo Entregas

Problem

A person manually cleaned Excel sheets before they entered the downstream process: repetitive, slow, and error-prone.

Solution

I automated the whole cleanup with a VBA macro.

Impact

Saves roughly 80 hours a month of one person's manual work.

05
Process diagnosis & operational consulting
20%
cost reduction
24 h
faster delivery time
~2 months
project duration

Operations Bottleneck Diagnosis: Imprenta Mariscal (Printing)

Problem

One machine had been failing recurrently without the operator reporting it: a small-looking bottleneck with disproportionate impact across the whole chain.

Method

I mapped the entire process from sales to finished product leaving the factory, using a Theory of Constraints approach under my manager's guidance. That's how the small bottleneck's true, much larger impact became visible.

Recommendation

Invest in a second machine to speed the process.

Impact

20% cost reduction and a 24-hour improvement in delivery time.

This engagement was operations and process consulting, not AI automation. Different discipline, same instinct: find the constraint, quantify it, fix it.
Toolbox

Tools I work with

Claude / Claude Code Next.js TypeScript Python Supabase VBA Cloudflare Workers Tailwind CSS Advanced Excel n8n (evaluated)
About

Who's behind this

Study
Engineering & Management, University of Exeter
Graduating
July 2027 · predicted First Class
Languages
Spanish (native) · English (fluent) · French (B1→B2)
Work rights
French passport: full EU mobility, no sponsorship needed

I'm a final-year Engineering & Management student at Exeter, and in parallel I run Cresco, my own AI-automation consultancy, with real paid clients in Ecuador.

I'm looking for graduate roles at AI consultancies and startups in the UK and Europe: a place to accelerate my learning while I keep building the business alongside. The work above is what that looks like in practice: identify the manual bottleneck, quantify it, and ship the system that removes it.

Contact

Let's talk.

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