Implementing an Owned and Controlled Mobile IT and Internet Infrastructure for Concord General Contracting, Inc. to Support Operations, Efficiency and Growth
Concord General Contracting, Inc. is an Arizona-based general commercial contractor. Celebrating 50+ years in business, they have locations in Mesa, Tucson and Lake Havasu. Concord specializes in commercial construction in industries such as municipal, education, medical, retail, and religious institutions. As a company with a team of 84 employees and growing, Concord has complex IT needs across their large construction projects and multiple subcontractors.
As their managed IT services provider for over five years, Concord came to MyTek seeking their input on helping them create a flexible IT and Internet infrastructure for their job sites. A lack of reliable Internet on job sites – one that could easily be transferred from site to site with minimal effort as a standard process – was increasingly becoming a challenge for Concord and hampering operational efficiency.
“Originally, Concord thought this was a challenge they’d need to have an in-house IT resource to solve and implement,” said Tim Tiller, CEO of MyTek. “After discussions with them, they realized that we could help them solve this challenge. Being creative with IT solutions is one of MyTek’s strengths, and we welcome challenges like these from our clients to help them leverage technology to support their operations and growth.”
Up until implementing the new solution, Concord was relying on wi-fi pucks from the various service providers for their field staff or relying on the wi-fi of their clients’ Internet on job sites.
“This was not ideal as some of our clients like educational institutions have specific restrictions on their Internet for security, which makes sense, but didn’t necessarily work for us,” said Stephanie Ross, Chief Financial Officer for Concord.
“We have multiple people on our job site using the site trailers from project managers to supervisors to subcontractors. They all need reliable Internet for their tablets as well as connected hardware like printers and monitors,” said Ross. “Increasingly, like all industries, we are dependent on cloud-based software that we need real-time access to and require our subcontractors to use as well, which demands reliable job site Internet.”
“As a construction company, agility is everything, and technology helps you be more agile,” shared Talmage Burleson, MyTek’s Senior Solutions Architect.
Burleson added that the right technology both in Concord’s offices and on job sites is also a competitive advantage, allowing them to leverage technology, systems and past job site data on demand when putting together a bid, which is a highly competitive process in the construction industry.
“We had several discussions with Concord’s leadership and field staff to truly understand the challenge,” stated Tiller. “From there, we focused on researching solutions that gave their field staff the same Internet reliability and IT resources that their office team enjoyed. Security, of course, was also very important.”
Since some job sites are very remote and others less so, MyTek came up with a solution for both scenarios.
“Regardless of which solution we provide, our goal is to make it repeatable, efficient and easy for Concord,” stated Tiller. “Concord is very committed to its employees and ensuring they have the resources they need to do their jobs. That said, like all companies, they are also mindful of costs, so we created flexibility into the solution.”
MyTek’s solution provides Concord with an owned and controlled job site Internet connection that offers the appropriate bandwidth and security their field staff need and that can easily be closed down when a job ends and relocated to a new site.
“The solution took about three months of discovery, and by the sixth month mark, we really had a rinse and repeat process solidly in place,” shared Tiller.
According to Jessica Garcia, supervisor of operations at MyTek, “We now have a repeatable process in place where Concord submits a ticket when they have a new job site coming up. We then tap into our network of options from our initial research and provide Concord with a quote for the best Internet option for the specific site.”
Garcia added that once the quote is approved, MyTek manages the installation at the location, conducting all testing and managing the project until that job site closes. Once a job site is closed, MyTek also manages the inventory of all hardware, re-assigning it to the next job site.”
“Inventory management of hardware like modems is very helpful to me,” shared Ross. “Sometimes our site staff will not always wait for MyTek to disassemble a job site and just drop a modem on my desk. I don’t have to worry as I know MyTek is keeping inventory and will know which job site it came from.”
Garcia said, “We’ve gotten really good at deploying the Internet and IT infrastructure at a job site in a timely manner – once a site has power, it takes us a week to get things up and running for Concord. Their team can come onto a job site with everything IT and Internet related in place.”
