Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation

Amid ongoing challenges, small Puerto Rican company charts a course for growth.

Dec 27, 2021 | by Ken Wysocky |

Puerto Rico Business Management Business Strategy Family Business Small Business Sewer Equipment Amerivac Group International Trucks UDOR U.S.A. Howden Group Education/Training Hydroexcavation Vactor Manufacturing Minority-Owned Business

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — Alfredo Hernandez (right) uses the lance to break up the ground at a job site, while HydroEx President and General Manager Miguel Rivera Villamil works the remote control for the hydroexcavator.

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — One of the company’s first jobs was construction of a new taxiway at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in the city of Carolina, Puerto Rico. The company often still works at the airport to this day.

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — Educating customers on the benefits of vacuum excavation work is important to HydroEx as the only vacuum excavation company on the island.

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — Miguel Rivera Villamil, HydroEx president and general manager, and his wife Cecilia Lloréns, vice president and chief financial officer, with their hydroexcavator from Sewer Equipment. The two returned to Puerto Rico after years in the United States to launch a vacuum excavation company after seeing the need for one.

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — The company’s major clients are the numerous pharmaceutical manufacturers on the island. Here, truck operator Alfredo Hernandez (left) and Rivera Villamil work outside a manufacturing plant.

Hard Work, Determination Help Company Show Importance of Hydroexcavation — The company’s only hydroexcavator is a MAXVAX 700 built by Sewer Equipment.

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In a way, HydroEx — a hydroexcavation company in Puerto Rico — is a lot like the island country it calls home: Despite challenges and setbacks, it just keeps rolling with the punches and striving for further growth. Owners Miguel Rivera Villamil and Cecilia Lloréns and established the company in 2003 in Guaynabo, near the capital of San Juan on the northern side of the island. Since that time, they’ve endured more than their fair share of turmoil and upheaval: A deep economic downturn that started in 2008. Devastating Hurricane Maria in September 2017. A 6.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked the country in January 2020. And

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