Special reconstruction. Néstor Gil, maintenance manager: "Dismantling and reassembling an entire plant in six months is much more complicated than starting from scratch."
Last August, Néstor Gil Fernández celebrated ten years at our Albal plant, the last of which he spent as head of maintenance and process engineering. His experience has been key to the reconstruction. But even more so has been his attitude and commitment.
He was one of the first people to enter the premises after the evacuation of his trapped colleagues, and he cannot forget the first image he encountered: "it looked like something out of an apocalyptic movie." But without a soundtrack, because the silence was thicker than the mud. The desolation and disbelief spread to the colleagues who were arriving. Among them, he remembers his colleague from finance, worried because she was responsible for paying the salaries that same day.
In the first few days after the flood, Néstor walked the five kilometers from his home to the plant. He navigated mud, cars, and debris. He even found some victims along the way.
"The first thing was to cut off the electricity to work safely. From then on, the focus was on the facilities: restoring supplies, checking equipment, contacting suppliers..." He was part of the crisis team and had clear priorities. That's why the maintenance team he leads barely dealt with removing mud, as it focused on bringing the factory back to life.
The challenge was enormous: "dismantling and reassembling an entire plant in less than six months is much more complicated than starting from scratch."
They took advantage of each intervention to introduce improvements: new distributions, updates, and a redesign of layouts that will optimize production in the future.
For him, the key to success lies in the people. "I am very proud of my team. They have done things that had never been done here before: dismantling and assembling machines, cleaning tanks, and making repairs without waiting for outside companies, because they couldn't serve us at the speed we needed."
That is why, since the disaster, almost all of his team has worked Saturdays, holidays, and even during Fallas or Christmas. Because the priority was clear: to get the plant up and running as soon as possible.
Now, the satisfaction of seeing the factory up and running is immense, and his outlook for the future is optimistic. He hopes to continue growing, take on new projects, and strengthen the unity that, in the worst of times, turned adversity into a driving force for recovery.