Engineering Construction for Tomorrow

Presented at ISE Expo in Dallas, Texas, on August 20, 2024

Construction-Engineering, it’s one word not two. In reality, it’s not even two separate tasks, it’s two parts of the same task. To succeed in our Industry today, we must look back to what worked in the decades past when telecom networks first began to be deployed. Efficiency derived from engineers that had experience with construction. Engineers inspected the networks and learned from changes applied during the buildout of their plans. Today’s market is flooded with desktop design and digital field collection such as LiDAR and GIS tool sets. Improving design and deployment of networks with technology is as advancement that is taking place now and we should adopt more of these tools.

Our Industry MUST perform field level validation with construction experienced team members, bringing engineers to the field to learn through experience in how to implement a plan and identifying and transferring team members with construction experience into our engineering departments to share their knowledge. Embracing a culture of cross-training will create a more well-rounded team that can find efficiencies through shared experiences and shared leadership.

Attendees will learn to:

1. Improve team morale and culture through a shared mission and shared leadership.
2. Expose specialists to the “jack of all trades” mentality.
3. Apply historical lessons learned to the use of cutting-edge technology, High Tech meets Old School.

Session duration: 30 minutes

About the Presenters

Dennis Pappas is a happy Colorado native that enjoys the outdoors while hunting, fishing or camping with my family. He has seen and experienced a number of changes in the Communications field over the past 40+ years and that is probably what he enjoys most about working in this industry – constant change and the speed at which it occurs. In 2021, he seized the opportunity to join the NextLight team and is currently the Director of their fiber network with a focus on expanding their service suite while continuing to maintain and expand our fiber network. He has held a number of leadership positions in the industry in Network Operations, Engineering, Product Development, Technical Regulatory and Public Policy but by far the most enjoyable experience to date has been with NextLight and the customers that they delight daily. There is nothing more satisfying than building customer trust and continuing to grow our business with technology and community focus.

Bob Morphew is an experienced telecom professional with over 25 years of OSP deployments under his belt. He has been a Laborer, Operator, Field Engineer, OSP Engineer, Project Manager, Vice President of OSP, Entrepreneur and Consultant. Bob’s approach to construction-engineering was developed while working under the guidance of his early engineering mentors, that were all former construction leaders.