Felipe Martínez did not imagine himself working in a technology company strongly linked to structural engineering. When he chose to study Business Administration and Economics, Commercial Engineering as it is known in Chile, he did so precisely because he did not want to be tied to a single path. He was looking for a versatile career that would allow him to decide later what he wanted to build.
At the Adolfo Ibáñez University he discovered the world of entrepreneurship and began to be interested in an idea that still accompanies him: creating companies that mix technology with impact. Years later he worked in large companies, joined a foundation linked to entrepreneurship and studied an MBA in Spain. But there was a project that continued to circulate in parallel.
Huella Structural already existed as a technological development promoted by his father, an architect, along with a team of structural engineers. They had created a sensor capable of measuring the behavior of a structure, but they still needed to convert that technology into a product and a company capable of bringing it to the market. It was then that Felipe decided to take on the challenge.
“When I arrived there was a sensor that sent data to an Excel. There was no commercial product, there was no company behind it. That’s where we managed to turn it around and start building Structural Footprint.”
From a sensor to a technology company
Today, Huella Structural delivers structural health monitoring as a service. Through sensors installed in buildings and infrastructure, connectivity and data analysis in the cloud, it allows us to know how structures behave, detect changes and support inspection and maintenance decisions.
The story, however, began several years earlier. While still at university, Felipe participated with his father in a project that sought to generate energy from the vibrations of the train.
The initiative obtained financing from Corfo and developed a prototype, although it was never commercially viable. What did survive was an idea: use that energy to power sensors capable of understanding the behavior of structures.
Over time, that intuition evolved into a structural monitoring project.
Felipe observed the development from the outside for several years, until he decided to join in the middle of the pandemic. Their task was no longer to build the sensor; was to build a company.
- What led you to opt for “Structural Footprint”?
“I always wanted to create something of my own. When I returned from Spain I saw that there was a very powerful technology, but it lacked the foundations to grow. There I proposed to the partners that I take charge of the development of the company.”
That process also changed his way of doing business. He tried to open Huella Structural to the European market too early and the market showed him that it was not the time yet.
“The market tells you when something is not ready yet. The important thing is to realize it in time and stop spending resources pushing something that does not yet have the necessary foundations.”
Change the culture of prevention
For Felipe, the problem that Structural Footprint solves does not only appear when an earthquake occurs. It appears much earlier.
His favorite comparison is to a blood test: A person can feel fine and still get a preventive checkup to detect a problem before it becomes serious. He believes that structures should work the same way.
- What does it mean to talk about “structural health”?
“We want to know how a structure is behaving in a preventive manner. If an alert appears, you can act before the problem becomes greater”
The challenge, he says, is no longer just to build buildings that resist earthquakes, but to understand how…
… remain after facing them and if they experienced changes that may affect their safety. Today that information can be measured with data.
Felipe believes that the next step is to build a true culture of prevention, a task that is still pending in Chile and in much of Latin America.
“We Latin Americans are very unpreventive. We see it with the car, with the dentist and also with structures. We wait for a problem to occur so we can act”
That is why Structural Footprint also encourages monitoring to be widespread in critical infrastructure, such as bridges, hospitals and public buildings, where prevention can make a difference before an emergency occurs.
Build a company with data and perseverance
Although today Huella Structural works with clients such as Cencosud, Empresa de Ferrocarriles del Estado (EFE) and projects in other Latin American countries, Felipe recognizes that the beginning was much more difficult than he imagined.
When he assumed leadership of the company, he projected growth that ended up arriving much slower than expected. The construction industry was still hit by the pandemic and many of the sales it had hoped for simply didn’t happen.
“The starting point was super complex. Nothing I had projected in my Excel came true”
Over time, new funds from Corfo, open innovation projects and a much more robust product arrived.
Unexpected obstacles also appeared, such as stock problems that slowed growth for almost two years.
Looking back, he says that perseverance…
…ended up being much more important than any initial plan.
- What advice would you give today to an entrepreneur who is just starting out?
“You have to be persistent, but not deaf or blind. You have to listen to what the market tells you, adjust quickly and correct in time. Correcting late always costs much more”
That idea also sums up the way Huella Structural looks at the future. Its goal is for structural monitoring to stop being a niche technology and become a standard for the industry and for people.
Knowing the “health” of a building is as normal as reviewing a business report before purchasing or leasing a property.
Because, in the end, he is convinced that prevention will always be cheaper than reconstruction. And making decisions with data can also save lives.
