Syntec: Great Consultants Behind Great Engineers

In its commitment to excellence, Syntec has always sought to work with the best consultants to carry out highly complex projects. The exercise of combining experienced professionals with young professionals has resulted in reliable solutions successfully implemented in our clients’ industrial plants.

This approach is fully shared by our renowned consultants, Fernando Kanacri and Ramón Montecinos, who have more than 40 years of experience in the field and are experts in their areas: materials handling and structure, respectively. In an interview with Syntec they gave their point of view regarding engineering issues, the synergy that exists when forming a team of senior engineers and semi-senior engineers and the importance of the human factor in the teams when facing important and complex challenges.

Fernando Kanacri, a Mechanical Civil Engineer from the University of Chile and MSc. from the University of California, Berkeley, recalls that he came to Syntec through a recommendation seeking Rocky’s training service. “I turned to them to give me the advice to simulate with the Rocky program and I proceeded to do the corresponding improvement. I had done many chutes before, but I did them all with Chute Maven, one of the first programs that came to Chile. When this program was left behind, Rocky appeared and since then I have always been working with Syntec to solve not only chute problems, but also conveyor belt problems that they receive and for which they ask me for consulting”.

Ramón Montecinos, a civil engineer specialized in structures, says that he met Syntec “in an AMSA project where there was
a problem and they asked Syntec for a fine analysis that included simulation with Ansys, and since I had been involved in the project review team, AMSA asked me to collaborate with Syntec. We did a good job, detected the causes of the problems and from then on, we have done several things together, especially for AMSA.

About the first project developed with Syntec

Fernando Kanacri states that it was for Compañía Minera Antamina, “I remember that I had a very good first impression, they modeled the chutes very well and then they presented me their results, I liked them, I found them quite superior to Chute Maven and we started to make reports together. It was a good experience and that’s why I kept working with them as a consultant and so far I still work directly with them on all projects. Either because they call me, or I call them. I would say that we have a very good working relationship between both companies”.

“In the vast majority of the projects we have done in collaboration with Syntec, the improvements have been implemented.
To such an extent that some clients have even called me to tell me ‘look, the improvement was perfect, it has been done exactly as you said’. So far, we haven’t had any complaints from any client about the projects we have done together”.

Ramón Montecinos says that the first project he worked on with Syntec was for Minera Antucoya. “From the first day I liked Syntec’s engineers very much, I would say that we have had a relationship beyond the professional, it has also been human and affectionate. I have witnessed all the growth they have had, and they have grown a lot”. “On the one hand, Syntec values field experience and on the other hand, the client also wants the same thing, that is, that professionals with vast experience intervene to ensure success.

Profile of a Syntec professional

For Fernando Kanacri “what characterizes a Syntec engineer is their vast knowledge of new technologies, mathematics, algorithms and also their initiative and resourcefulness to solve problems. Syntec started with many young people, and these young people have been learning because they have a tremendous learning capacity, a very good command of the software they use and, in short, they are very good professionals”.

Ramón Montecinos separates his description into the technical and the human. “From the technical point of view, I will mention his remarkable modeling capacity, the analytical capacity that Syntec’s professionals have. I believe that Syntec has today the best – or one of the best – analytical capacities in Chile. In structures there are very few people who have the capacity, the domain, and the computational infrastructure that Syntec has. They have constituted a very solid permanent central core, they are all good students from good universities and this for me is a great asset. In the human aspect, they have built a pleasant work environment where each one stands out in his specialty”.

Relevance of the studies carried out by Syntec

Fernando believes that “Syntec has a very broad spectrum in which it can act, they started on the narrow path of simulations through the discrete element and finite element method, but they have been expanding. Today I believe that they do well to complement these studies with topographic surveys by means of Faro, gas, dust, and particle applications. They already have all the engineering knowledge and a good command of the technologies. Now the laboratory issue is very good, it is very required and in the future, they can make it grow by investing little by little. In addition to the investment, a high degree of specialization of those who lead the Syntec laboratory is fundamental”.

In the world of projects there are corporations that have very good teams, I am referring to large engineering companies. The
point that Syntec has and that they do not have is the ability to solve the complex problem with complex modeling,” explains Ramón Montecinos. “Problems can be of two types: simple or complex. A simple problem is solved with an easy method, but a complex problem needs the use of complex methods, and these complex methods are the ones that normally large engineering offices do not master internally. “So this is the niche that Syntec has been exploring, to provide a service to large engineering and mining companies who need to solve a delicate problem with methods that have to be very specialized, and Syntec has responded very well to this need,” Ramón emphasizes. “They have their space here in Chile, they have space in Peru and wherever they want. And I see them going there. The only thing they have to do is to maintain their quality,” concludes Montecinos.

Synergy between a semi-senior professional and one with decades of experience

In the world of projects there are corporations that have very good teams, I am referring to large engineering companies. The point that Syntec has and that they do not have is the ability to solve the complex problem with complex modeling,” explains Ramón Montecinos. “Problems can be of two types: simple or complex. A simple problem is solved with an easy method, but a complex problem needs the use of complex methods, and these complex methods are the ones that normally large engineering offices do not master internally. “So this is the niche that Syntec has been exploring, to provide a service to large engineering and mining companies who need to solve a delicate problem with methods that have to be very specialized, and Syntec has responded very well to this need,” Ramón emphasizes. “They have their space here in Chile, they have space in Peru and wherever they want. And I see them going there. The only thing they have to do is to maintain their quality,” concludes Montecinos.

Synergy between a semi-senior professional and one with decades of experience

Kanacri believes that “A good mechanical engineer stands out when he has been working in an office on various engineering projects where he can apply the knowledge he learned in his training and also when he has been in the field observing how the machines perform in the plant. Reality is different from theory. By combining the knowledge from both worlds, the engineer complements himself and becomes a good professional. With a senior professional by their side – who has been in the field for more than 20 years – these new engineers quickly absorb the knowledge and experience of the senior engineer. It is not feasible to sustain an engineering company only with senior engineers because of the high costs involved, so companies are hiring young people and rely on 2 or 3 specialists from various disciplines: mechanical, structural, electrical and instrumentation to give compliance to their work. This is the best formula to support young companies and to form a team, since young professionals are flexible, they have many concerns, but they lack experience. This experience is acquired from engineers with more years of experience”.

Montecinos returns to the subject of the difficult problem “in the difficult problem the complex method has to be supported by a simple approximation that only a person with a large amount of experience can construct. When you are faced with a complicated problem and you use a huge computer with a very good program, you have to know that the number that it gave is not too far off. Numbers are deceptive, therefore, a complex problem has to consider a control model that will indicate and guide you. This is what the experienced person brings, his ability to build simple control models to keep complex processes under control. Because the more complex the process under study is, the easier it is for the number to deceive you because the number is very treacherous. The trajectory gives you a sense of intuition, an insight into where the result is going, and this is a matter of years of experience seeing problems”.

“On the other hand, young engineers have the skills of the model, without a doubt, the skills that older professionals do not have because they become more clumsy or slower with technology. The young professional is closer and less afraid of technological tools, they are more natural to them. They are very skilled with the processes, so it is a complement. And the other thing that Syntec has is its group of designers who are very quick to model, to build the model, that is also Syntec’s asset, and we must not forget that they are an important part because they build and feed the model”.

All of the above allows us to conclude that there are many areas of work in which a professional with more than 40 years of experience has much to say and much to contribute to young professionals, and they are an intellectual asset that must be taken care of because of their high value in engineering. Syntec has understood this and has integrated it as a key aspect in the consolidation of its good reputation in the market.