Respiro

It is 6 March 2020. A phone rings in the offices of a small company in the Metropolitan City of Bologna: the government is asking Italy’s sole manufacturer of ventilators to help the nation in the face of the coronavirus crisis that is bringing hospitals to their knees. Just four hours later, the company’s managers have decided to answer the call. They cancel consignments to all international clients, prepare a plan and impose one condition: help from the Army. And so began an unprecedented experiment in which the staff of SIARE Engineering worked alongside 25 experts chosen by the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Industries Agency and consultants made available by some of the country’s top mechanical engineering firms: FCA, Ferrari and Lamborghini. What should have been mission impossible - quadrupling production - was achieved on May 28, 45 days ahead of schedule, with 2,000 ventilators manufactured exclusively for Italian hospitals. An extraordinary human adventure.