THE INTERVIEW Sylvain Raymond
From starting his career as a graduate with COH (Canadian Overhead Handling), acquired by REEL Group. The company changed its name in 2016 to represent its international audience, Sylvain Raymond, chief technical officer, North America, REEL COH, has a wealth of experience in the cranes industry.
N
Personal info Father-of two Sylvain lives with his partner in Quebec with their two dogs. His son is studying medicine, and his daughter has just finished her master’s degree in architecture. The 62-year-old hopes to stay on at REEL COH in a supervisory role. In his spare time, he enjoys hiking and canoeing in the beautiful Canadian mountains.
ot only that, in his spare time, he sits on a technical subcommittee for CMAA (the Crane Manufacturers Association of America), an independent trade association affiliated with the Material Handling Industry (MHI) as assistant VP of Engineering, where, alongside CMAA president Dan Beilfuss, VP Molly Wood
and Warren McDaniel, VP, Engineering, to make the industry a proactive and safer place to work.
OCH: Sylvain, what drives you as an industry leader? SR: Designing custom cranes, where no two projects are the same. Our purpose is to deliver maximum value for our customers starting from the bidding processes to the design, fabrication, and finish with site acceptance tests. That’s what drives me. We manufacture custom-made equipment on large gantry cranes, which is a huge challenge for us. For example, a large US hydro client.
We worked with this US hydro client to manage the dams on some rivers in Washington and Oregon State. The gantry we delivered was for an emergency gantry that could lower at the same time, three gates simultaneously, to close the penstock for a turbine. So that was three times a 195-ton gantry. The project lasted about three years, but it's very rewarding once everything is up and running flawlessly on site. We're a multidisciplinary company, so we do all our engineering in-house. We have mechanical, electrical and automation engineers. So, at the start of every project we know who the lead designers are and how to go through all quality processes and design reviews together. The challenge is to take into account all previous design experiences and learn from any mistakes to ensure the job runs smoothly and on time.
OCH: What is your biggest business inspiration? SR: Being able to respond to technical challenges and demanding applications. We manufacture custom cranes, so we do not have a standard design, but we build according to the needs of our customers. But that technical challenge to respond to a very demanding need is what drives me. I am not afraid of taking on a challenge for
example, we had to design a crane for a University in British Columbia which was going to handle a hot cell (radioactive material) and that radioactive material was generated from a particle accelerator to make medical isotopes. The purpose of the crane was to handle that hot cell and not only handle it, but to be single failure proof. That means to be able to hold and secure the load in the event of a single failure, but also have high availability in order to secure the hot cell into its lab container so people could access the area and maintain or repair the crane.
It was very challenging, because we had to make
sure the crane was highly secure but also had a lot of availability in order for people to be able to secure the load and access the area. Another example is a project we did for a US aluminum producer, in Spokane, Washington State. They had seven transfer cars loaded with aluminum and they needed to send them from one location to another. But the transfer cars had to move in a way
40 | Spring 2024 |
www.ochmagazine.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51
