GIS International Celebrates Thirty Years of Work and Growth

On Saturday, December 2, in the splendid setting of the Grand Hotel Villa Politi in Syracuse, the celebrations for the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of GIS International took place.
The activities began around 4:45 PM, when 55 of the company’s 70 employees gathered in the hotel’s meeting room to retrace the entrepreneurial journey of the Nudo brothers, which began long before 1993, the pivotal year in which GIS was founded.
It was General Manager Pietro Nudo, second generation of the Nudo family in GIS, who guided those present through the human and professional history of Ernesto and Aldo, two young men from Calabria who were drawn to Sicily by the growing industrial hub of Priolo – Augusta – Melilli in the Syracuse area.
In September 1970, at just twenty-one years old, Ernesto found work thanks to his uncle Francesco Zito, who had moved to Priolo a few years earlier. As deputy site manager of Sicilmontaggi, uncle Francesco had several contacts in the growing industrial zone of Syracuse, and Ernesto began working at Officine Grandis as a crew leader trainee on assembly projects at the Sincat SpA plant.
In turn, Ernesto, who had meanwhile been hired by the prestigious engineering company Foster Wheeler Italiana as a safety inspector for the expansion of the Esso refinery in Augusta, called upon his brother Aldo in 1973 to be hired by Fochi SpA in Bologna as a crew leader trainee for the construction of the Lube 2 plant at the Augusta refinery.
Between 1972 and 1980, Ernesto consolidated his position with Foster Wheeler Italiana, becoming a safety coordinator and later a site safety manager, while Aldo completed his professional path at Fochi SpA as a technical supervisor and crew leader, often working abroad on major construction projects.
After nearly a decade in which their careers took different paths, Ernesto and Aldo found the right moment to work together in 1982, when Ernesto requested a two-year leave of absence from Foster Wheeler with the aim of establishing his own company in Sicily. Ernesto knew he needed a temporary solution, as Foster Wheeler’s investments in Augusta would pause for three years and resume in 1985.
In the meantime, Aldo, also weary of constant travel for Fochi’s projects, was ready to join Ernesto in their new venture. Together, they founded Fotoincisione Siracusana in Syracuse, a company rooted in Ernesto’s passion for photography, graphic design, and publishing.
Although they secured various orders, Siracusa proved to be a challenging market due to clients who failed to pay on time. Ernesto and Aldo, simultaneously, laid the groundwork to return to industrial work by founding the Multiservices cooperative, later transformed into Sitec S.r.l.
As planned by Foster Wheeler, industrial projects resumed at the Esso refinery in Augusta in 1985, and Sitec was invited to provide safety-related services.
Thus, Ernesto and Aldo returned to the construction and process industry, but this time as their own bosses. Under Ernesto’s guidance, Aldo honed his skills in safety, leading to the first hires (including long-time employee Nicola Maltese) and the first contracts as a direct supplier for the Esso Italiana refinery in Augusta. Their work spanned multiple areas, including on-site safety supervision and awareness campaigns through competitions, awards, and posters aimed at promoting a strong safety culture among both internal and external personnel. During this period, the number of accidents involving third-party contractors at the Esso refinery significantly decreased, eventually reaching zero. This success was also due to Ernesto’s insight to suggest that Esso entrust GIS with the first aid service at the site.
In 1993, the Nudo brothers founded the company they would devote all their energy to for the well-being of themselves and the families of their employees: GIS Global Industrial Services.
The company continued the legacy of SITEC, focusing on site supervision, but with the introduction of Law 626 in 1994, which revolutionized accident prevention and safety, GIS also ventured into new areas, including risk assessment documents, quality management systems, and training.
In the mid-1990s, new professionals joined the company, focusing on the documentation and procedural aspects of safety, laying the foundation for the first software development projects driven by the creativity of Ernesto, his son Pietro, and early programmers. The Software Development division was born in 1996 and grew significantly starting in 2001, with the development of software such as SafePlan, SafeForm / Syntalex Form, SafeWork, and SafeGest.
These programs addressed issues related to safety and health, safety, and environmental compliance. SafeWork, for example, first installed at ISAB in 2002, digitized the work permit issuance process, a critical legal document for identifying risks and safety measures for specific tasks in industrial sites (typically classified as major accident hazard facilities). Today, this software, now in its sixth version and fully web-based, is used in most refineries in Italy (including the RAM refinery in Milazzo, the ISAB refinery in Priolo, and the SARLUX refinery in Cagliari) and is a flagship product of GIS’s software offerings.
In the 2000s, GIS solidified its position as a consulting and supervisory firm while expanding its commercial offerings, particularly in vertical software development for safety.
In 2008, Ernesto Nudo delved into risk analysis, developing the Risk Energy Management model, an innovative methodology based on the energies involved in any activity or operation, considering the concurrent activities, each with its own energy matrix. This research culminated in the publication of a book in 2013 (“Methodologies for Risk Assessment Based on Energy Management”) and a successful research and development project under the European Union’s POR program, completed in 2014.
In 2014, GIS further evolved by creating a Business Unit dedicated to Working at Height and Confined Space Rescue (WAHCS), a growing area of concern since the introduction of DPR 177/2011 for the protection and recovery of workers in hard-to-reach or potentially contaminated areas. Today, this BU includes about 10 rescue teams operating across Italy at sites and plants for clients such as Eni, A2A Produzione, ENEL Produzione, Sorgenia Produzione, the Sonatrach refinery, Sasol Italy, and others. Other BUs were added in the following years, including a Training BU, for which GIS is certified by the Sicilian Region, and the PED BU (Protection Equipment Department), focused on selling and renting protective equipment such as fall protection devices, portable gas detectors, and Category III PPE.
In 2016, GIS underwent a transformation, becoming GIS International, with a significant rebranding of its logo and corporate image, and a stronger focus on internationalization. This initiative, which began in 2018 with various missions to Greece, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, was slowed by COVID from 2020 to 2022 but resumed in 2023 with the successful completion of a software supply project in Switzerland for a major German-based pharmaceutical multinational. This effort will continue in the future.
In 2018, based on an intuition of president and founder Ernesto Nudo, the Genoma Digital Model paradigm was born, leading to the Industry 4.0-based Genoma Master Services project, a holistic software designed to orchestrate processes, revolutionizing and interconnecting all company systems in an automatic, interactive, and pervasive way.
Today, GIS International is a company with about 70 employees and a turnover exceeding EUR 5 million in 2022, firmly looking to the future and innovation.
After this reconstruction of GIS’s history and its founders, the evening continued with an aperitif for the employees, who were later joined by their families, bringing the total number of attendees to over one hundred.
Back in the meeting room, participants listened to brief greetings from the heads of the various BUs that make up the company: Francesco Spina (BU HSE) remembered colleagues away on business trips at ongoing sites and welcomed Sardinian colleague Andrea Boi, an operational safety coordinator in Sardinia. Samira Vedda, from the BU Administration, showed a video highlighting the various “faces” of the BU, while Pierluca Monaco, head of the BU Graphics and Publishing, spoke briefly about his work and long experience with GIS, having been hired in 2001.
Following these speeches, Giancarlo Berritta, an important company manager, described the activities of the BU Infirmary, with the 24/7 first aid service at the Sonatrach refinery, as well as other clients during shutdowns and construction activities.
Then it was the turn of Valerio Pupillo, head of the Software Development BU, who also joined GIS at just 21 in 2001. He thanked his team, as did his colleague Sebastiano Trovato, head of the development team, who focused on his most important life project: building his family, which he was able to achieve thanks to his work at GIS.
Marco Cilmi showed a video highlighting the complexity of the BU Working at Height and Confined Space Rescue processes, from client requests, site inspections, and offer preparation to logistics planning, entry permits, simulated interventions, and exercises.
Orazio Grillo, GIS’s training director, then addressed the audience regarding the results achieved by GIS in this area, with its Training Center located in the ASI area in Augusta. Giulia Dibennardo and Anna Fazzina briefly illustrated their activities in supporting company management.
The highlight of the meeting room session came with the final speeches from the founders: Aldo shared some episodes from the early days of his professional and entrepreneurial journey, always alongside his older brother Ernesto, once again emphasizing their family bond and affection. Ernesto delivered a highly educational and motivational presentation, showing how human needs, from the “YOU” (dependency) dimension to the “I” (independence) and “WE” (interdependence) dimensions, are always ultimately connected to an ancient and extraordinary word: LOVE, the foundation of every social sphere. Ernesto concluded by thanking everyone present for understanding the deeper meaning behind the Nudo brothers’ goal in creating their business: belonging to a great human and professional family.
At the end of the speeches, employees hired up to 2001 were awarded: Nicola Maltese, Simonetta Parisi, Eva Nudo, Pierluca Monaco, Valerio Pupillo, and Marco Cilmi.
The evening continued in the banquet hall, where the 150 attendees, including employees and their families, enjoyed a delightful land-based menu, accompanied by background music that later allowed those who wished to dance, especially the many children and young people present.
Magnificent graphic works created by president Ernesto were also raffled off, as a further gesture of affection towards his collaborators, the members of the large GIS family.