Nicola Scatigno, Operations Manager for Military & UN sites at ES-KO, has spent more than 25 years running catering and life support operations in some of the world's most demanding locations. Italian by origin, he began his career in Sarajevo in December 1998 and went on to work in Kosovo, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. He joined ES-KO in 2022 and today oversees the company's defense and UN operations across Iraq, Cyprus and Somalia.
How did it all begin - have you always worked in hostile risky environments?
By chance, really. I had finished school in the July of 1998 and somebody rang to say there was a chance to work in Sarajevo. I said, why not? I left that December, and after that it went country by country. When Kosovo opened, the teams in Bosnia moved to Kosovo. When Afghanistan opened, the teams in Kosovo moved on again. Somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling unusual.
Did you ever try a quieter job?
Five years in Brussels. In the end I asked to be sent back out — it was too normal a country for me.
And what is your role at ES-KO today?
I am Operations Manager for our military and UN sites — Iraq, Cyprus, Somalia. I am based everywhere; my office is my handbag. Most of my time is spent moving between those countries. Today, for instance, I am in Bahrain, supporting a new catering contract with the US Army.
You have served both defense and commercial clients. How do they differ?
Day to day, the military can be the easier of the two: expectations are clear, and when you have good people on the other side, things move. The difficulty is contractual. Procedures, inspections, veterinary and military police checks, a scope of work you cannot step outside of, strict rules on tendering and extensions. With a commercial client there is room to talk. With the military the framework is fixed — and you learn to do excellent work inside it.
What is the hardest lesson the field has taught you?
People assume it is the danger. Last February we spent nine hours in the bunkers on the base where I was working; you stay calm, and afterwards it becomes a story. The hard lesson is logistics. In most of the places we go, and on military sites in particular, we cannot buy anything locally — everything has to be imported. So the first thing I ask of my teams is planning, and planning that holds, because a single mistake means several hundred people go hungry. They have their room, their work and the dining facility. That is all. The meal is the moment they take their mind off everything else — and it belongs to us.
ES-KO has extensive experience in mobilizing camps quickly. What decides whether those first weeks go well?
Understanding the place before you promise anything — the logistics, the facilities, what genuinely exists on the ground. Then working shoulder to shoulder with the client, because sometimes we arrive before they do. Somalia stayed with me for that reason: we landed with little more than a container in transit and built the operation up from there. Beginnings are what I like. Once everything runs smoothly, I start to get restless.
And the project you are proudest of?
The BL Harbert project in Iraq, without hesitation — my first with ES-KO, providing catering, housekeeping and laundry for more than a thousand people building the new American consulate in Erbil. The camp perimeter was a single kilometre and nobody could leave it. So we marked the year for them: Halloween, Thanksgiving, decorations, menus worth looking forward to — so they could feel like people living somewhere, not people confined. We also ran the restaurant for the OBO, US State Department team, overseeing construction, and they sent us a letter of appreciation. That one I kept.
Where is the defense market heading?
The defense side will never close. Look around Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, full of military personnel waiting. And the direction is clear: a soldier is there to be a soldier, not a cook or a mechanic. That is precisely why contractors like us will always have a part to play. We are People to Trust in Difficult Times.
