The Wireless Superhighway

With the wireless industry surging on a competitive wave, KCI’s biggest challenge is to guide carriers along the leading edge of engineering and construction technology, applying daily advances in every facet of site development.

The wireless industry is forging vast new regional infrastructures. The race to expand existing cellular networks and the licensing of new personal communication services companies has fueled an environment of intense competition. To maintain a competitive edge, businesses are accelerating efforts to design and construct the platforms that keep wireless traffic flowing.

“The face of the industry is changing,” said KCI Senior Vice President Chuck Phillips. “A few years ago, large companies were doing much of their own development work. Now, they’re outsourcing. They’re looking for one consultant to deliver complete services—permitting, GPS surveying, Phase I environmental assessments, cultural resource investigations, and geotechnical analysis along with site, structural, and mechanical & electrical designs.

“New FCC requirements are also coming into play,” added Phillips. “New facilities must be built with a minimum of two users in mind. Most of the carriers don’t even own their own sites anymore—they lease space from a third party, like Crown Castle International, Pinnacle, American Tower, and SpectraSite, which own thousands of towers. The need to collocate facilities presents great opportunities for KCI.”

Over the last ten years, such opportunities have fueled enormous success for KCI, which provides telecommunication engineering services in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida. KCI’s tower construction company, KCI Tower Systems, Inc., is among the most experienced in the region. In July, the Engineering News Record listed KCI 18th among the top 20 telecommunication firms in the country.

KCI provides telecommunication services from four principle offices in the East: Hunt Valley and Laurel, MD; Raleigh, NC; and Tampa, FL. “We’ve developed ‘Centers of Excellence’ in telecommunications along the East Coast,” noted Carlos Ostria, PE, head of KCI’s Laurel, MD, Office, “where we can turn around a structural analysis for a site within one week. Speed is as important as accuracy to our clients, so we’ve created special software to help us prepare our reports. We’ve worked on nearly 300 sites this year alone.”

Jim Blake, PE, manager of KCI’s Raleigh Office, agrees, “Every minute a carrier is down means lost revenue. Our clients are among the largest in the business, and our job is to get their sites operational quickly and economically.”

With the industry expanding at a record pace, Darryl Kroeze, PE, of KCI’s Tampa Office is discovering unconventional ways to help his clients. “Sites are getting harder and harder to find, because many of the preferred locations in urban areas are taken. So we’re designing stealthing solutions, like monopines—towers that look like pine trees—to help blend new sites into sensitive environments.” Kroeze also has created a database to keep track of the 1,500 sites KCI has worked on in Florida. “I used to keep the locations in my head, but it’s gotten to be too many,” he said. “When a client comes in needing to add or update a site, all the information we need to help is at our fingertips.”

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