City of Deland, Florida

It was a nice spring evening after-hours when I settled into my laptop at home and checked my e-mail and read the request from Tinny Dillinger: "Can you install fiber optic cabling in Florida on your GSA Contract?". Her signature indicated she was an employee of the City of DeLand, FL. This was one of those rare e-mails that got me excited.

The next day I called and she conferenced in her boss, Greg Whidden. Turned out they had already received budgetary proposals (although I found out much later they were much higher than our eventual purchase order) but were attracted to a GSA Schedule purchase because they didn’t want to go through the pain and expense of a formal RFP / Public Bid process. They were also leery of being saddled with an unscrupulous low bidder who may seek to exploit design flaws and murder them with change orders.

The city of Deland, Florida were one of the few municipalities (in my experience) who seemed to realize that they have the ability to purchase off of a GSA contract and benefit from government pre-negotiated prices.

Knowing that this was an aerial construction project, I knew it would take several months for the engineering and make-ready to be complete. Progress Energy owned the poles, and they would be very particular about hardware attachments. Doing the math, (it was April) I was picturing myself supervising our aerial line crews in the warm Florida sun right about the time winter was plaguing my friends and relatives in Ohio.

First order of business was getting licensed in the State of Florida. After years of being hookwinked by hurricane / storm chasers, the Florida public demanded protection from crooked contractors and the State of Florida made me pay for the sins of those few by putting me through the ringer before finally issuing us an Electrical Contractor Specialty License.

The 12 month process included sitting for two exams (can I brag a second? 96% on the four-hour technical part), submitting two applications, and submitting to credit and background checks. Fortunately, the engineering and make ready took much longer than even I (in my skepticism) anticipated.

It was the first month in October 2008, a full 18 months after my initial contact with Tinny, 6 months after our receipt of the Purchase Order, and five trips to Florida later for me, the pole line was ready for construction. Dick Treacle and our crew of six arrived and in stellar fashion, completed the construction of 5/16 strand (steel messenger) and nearly four miles of fiber optic cable within two weeks. In another week we had Fusion spliced pigtails on the Commscope cable ends in all seven buildings and everything tested perfect. The client was lit up on our fiber in less than a month after beginning construction.

The client was lit up on our fiber in less than a month after beginning construction.

After one change order due to an underground problem getting the north and south legs into the MDF our final contract was just over $100,000. From our perspective, even after the trouble and expense of licensing and obtaining the FDOT (Florida Department of Transportation) permit, we brought the project in under budget. From the client’s perspective, they had received another price from another local cable provider that was upwards of a half million.

Echo 24 completed the job correctly and at almost 1/5 of their cost.