About Us

When I started my career at Lockheed Martin, the thought of drawing accurate conclusions from fuzzy data was seen as nothing more than guessing.  But after a decade of developing s/w applications that could consume huge amounts of inaccurate data and use it to develop an incredibly accurate solution, I became a believer in data.  Data is your friend! Collect it!  Even before you know what you are looking for!  Once you have enough data and you take the time to analyze it, pertinent, actionable information will appear.

CogentView is a department within Sycamore Mechanical.  It really should be the other way around, for s/w applications is our true passion.  However, the initial contract that allowed me to leave a 20 year s/w development career at Lockheed Martin and funded the creation of the business was a large mechanical contract.  So Sycamore Mechanical it was.  We quickly started calling it "SyMec."

We are based in Phoenixville, Pa, where I have lived since 1973.  After graduating from Phoenixville High, I was without direction and did not go directly to college.  Luckily, after paving driveways and working other menial jobs for a year, I was accepted into Villanova University.  Wow, was that a challenge!  I was not a caring student in high school and went a year without hardly even signing my name, but there I was trying to figure out the derivative of a cosine!  Believe it or not, at the time, I didn't really know what a cosine was.  After a semester to catch up to speed, I was able to get my Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Graduating in 1992, I found the job market for MEs was a bit lacking.  After looking for that ideal ME job without success, I ended up at GE (soon to be Martin Marietta and then Lockheed Martin).  Promises were made about how I would be using my degree in the near future, but until then, here is a little s/w application that needs to be developed.  I was hooked!  Before I knew it I was forgetting that I hadn't eaten lunch and it was well past dinner...

For 8 years, numerical methods based s/w development was my thing.  Kalman Filters, Runge-Kutta propagators, Interpolators, Linear Algebra.... Loved it!  But when the manager position of my team opened, I decided to go for it, mostly so no outsider would come in and mess with my world.  Never thinking I would enjoy it... Was I ever wrong.. I loved it!  The next step occurred 3 years later... Second line manager, no technical responsibilities.... What have I done?  But again, loved it!  I realized I was now working with the most complicated machine ever made, the human!  I had 225 humans to try and understand and then optimize their placement.  Again 3 years later, the next move occurred.  I became the Engineering Manager.  And again... Loved it.  Unfortunately after 6 years in the EM role I decided it was time for a change.  I spent the next year building my off ramp... And then in March of 2013 I took the plunge... Never to look back, unless I need to, of course.

Our goal at CogentView is to take on those s/w challenges where the problem is harder than the code.  Those challenges that require the development of a critical method, or a mathematical algorithm.  Things like Optimization, Planning, Scheduling, and other challenging problems that need true engineering to solve.

Give us a chance to show you what we can do!