Ex-NPA turns a corner in Dubai

By Emman Cena
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 23, 2008

ROSENDO SANCHEZ JOINED the revolution like many student activists during the martial law years.

A cum laude graduate of the University of the Philippines in 1979, he topped the mechanical engineering board exams two years later. Immediately he got a good job as a junior engineer at Shell Philippines, one of the biggest oil companies in the country. But he quit this promising job to heed what he heard as the call of the times.

He found himself with the communist New People’s Army in the mountains of Iloilo and Davao, living the revolutionary way of life for a nine long and memorable years truly believing in its cause. On top of that, the guerilla movement led him to his life partner, Maggie, a social worker teaching in a local barrio church in Iloilo.

It was love made in the mountains, Sanchez says.

They had their firstborn years later, built a makeshift house in Davao, Maggie’s hometown, and started a simple family life while he was still active with the rebel movement.

But the setup didn’t work well for them. Rosendo had to regularly attend to his duties in the mountains, but “I already had two sons who I had to feed and send to decent schools. I needed money badly, having no house and permanent address in 1991.”

After a thorough assessment, he decided to call it quits. “They understood,” he says about his fellow-revolutionaries. “It was a bittersweet goodbye to the movement I dearly loved.”

A new struggle in Brunei

He flew back to Manila in 1991 and looked for a job.

“I literally scrambled to relearn the new methods and new practices of engineering. Nine years in the forested mountains of Iloilo and Davao is no joke.”
With sheer determination, he reviewed and brushed up on his lessons.

Soon he was hired as a project engineer in Mashhor, Brunei, and a year later managed to buy a lot in Iloilo. Years later, Sanchez was able to take his family to Brunei. He quickly got regular promotions and benefits.

But he was homesick after nine years. He also didn’t like the education his three children were getting in Brunei. Sanchez and family came home in 2000. The next year he set up his two companies.

The next challenge in Dubai

In 2005, he was contacted for the Dubai project and left in 2006 for a year, while still overseeing RBS Engineering technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers which he co-owns with brother Rolly, a structural engineer.

Sanchez remembers his bad start in Dubai.

“Who’s smoking in here?” he had asked loudly as he entered the interview room. In the cramped office a stern-looking Arab man, cigar between his fingers, was irked by his comment. The man, he soon found out, was to be his employer at the Burj Dubai Tower.

“Obviously, (the remark) irked him big time. He said I sounded arrogant.”

“Apprehensive as he was about my attitude, I was still hired, but was treated as a second-class worker,” Sanchez said of his most memorable incident as he started work in Dubai.

Earning employer’s trust

Though employed as a senior design manager, he was made to sit with the rank and file employees.

For a few months his every movement was checked and monitored. His work was continuously questioned.

“They were at first doubtful of my output but later discovered I was doing an excellent job,” said Sanchez. “It helped that in UP we were taught American and international standards. Employers commended me for that and I was given more assignments and entrusted with major projects.”

He soon earned their trust and was moved to a more comfortable office duly accorded a senior engineer.

Sanchez headed the High-Voltage Alternate Current (HVAC) Department of the Burj Dubai Tower, in 2006the tallest high-rise structure in the world.

His own companies

At contract’s end in 2007, he came home to attend to his own companies. Set up in 2001 and based at the Mega Plaza Tower in Ortigas, RBS Engineering Technologies and RBSanchez Consulting Engineers are focused on project design and consultancy.

Sanchez says that despite being relatively new in the industry, his companies have already attracted big-commissioned projects locally and abroad. His clients include Kraft Foods Inc., Toyota Motors, Shell Philippines, San Miguel Corporation, Penn Philippines, the Fort Bonifacio Stopover project, various hotels, malls, hospitals and food stores nationwide.

“But all these blessings didn’t just land on my lap,” he said. “I had to fight an uphill battle.”

“Everything is God’s gift,” said Sanchez, now 50 and himself an employer supervising about 25 employees.

His wife Maggie, who in the past taught in barrio schools and churches, now owns her own school in Parañaque.

An activist at heart

In small ways, Sanchez helps send a few students to school through his companies. Four high school graduates have been sent to Autocad and HVAC trainings for possible employment in his companies.

While there are still invitations and job offers abroad, Sanchez says he would like to retire here.

“But with the spiraling cost of commodities, I may consider it again,” he added.