IL/KY Business Update

Important Issues

Personnel Changes

We have added several new personnel to our operation over the past 4 weeks.  Ronn Goodwin is now working in Ballard helping with drop inspection.  Josh Kenderdine is training with Mike Massengill at Lightstream in Indiana.  He will be replacing Trey who will be coming south to work with the Lexington office.  It looks like Scott Lee will be coming on board this week and helping in TN and Alabama with John and crew.  Brock Childers will be helping with ROW for Thacker.

We are looking for additional staking personnel to work on several projects that we will have going this year as well as a large number of projects for next year.

We are looking to augment the Thacker-Grigsby staff with another resident and several inspectors.  We will be searching for these people over the next month or so.

Congratulations

Our congratulations go out to Judd Shaw on the birth of his new baby boy, Oliver Ryan.  He was born on July 31^st weighing 5lbs 14oz and 19” long.

Award

I would like to congratulate Don McKenzie for winning the $50 gift card for completing the survey on the newsletter.  There were a few respondents to the survey and from that list, we pulled Don’s name from the hat to win the gift card.

Miscellaneous

Safety

View this LINK to an OSHA safety video on YouTube.

Operations

Please remember that if you need any CAD/Drafting work to be done to put a ticket into the system to get that work accomplished.  The people in that group are tasked with getting their tickets completed, so any other work that they are given will not be worked on until a ticket is completed.

The Company is working with the NTCA health care people to determine if Finley Engineering is eligible to have our health care coverage provided by NTCA.  It looks like this is a significant improvement over our existing plan, however, in order to be rated, every single employee that is eligible for coverage (whether you have it or not) needs to fill out the information questionnaire for us to be able to get rated.  We will be emailing/calling and asking everyone to get those forms in.

Upcoming Events

The KTA/TTA show will soon be upon us.  It looks like we will have 3 or 4 people attend, with several also attending the following KTEA meeting.  It should be a good show this year at least for us with all of the work going on.  I would like to put an emphasis on getting connected with some TN companies as I believe there is also some opportunity there.

I will again be on the road the week of September 25^th visiting Thacker Grigsby, DREMC and Alabama Power.

The Great Lakes showcase is in Fort Wayne, IN October 24^th through 26^th.  Thomas and I will be attending this year.

The NREC (think electric) Region 2&3 show is in Chattanooga in October also.  We will be attending as now that we are starting to get established in the electric co-op market, we need to be there to interface with our clients. 

Mini-Projects

Staking Standards

Charles is working on a staking standards document for our group.  It should be completed before the end of September so we can use it for the Logan and Montrose work that we have to start in on.

Equipment Center

Suzy has issued out the requests for equipment inventory so that we can get our information updated in Atlas.  We will be putting an emphasis on getting this information back to her by the end of the month.

Client Projects

Thacker-Grigsby

Construction is continuing on Topmost Phase 2.  Edgar is getting used to the project and the contractor.

Hindman Phase 1 contract was awarded to A&C Construction and the Hindman Mallie / Dawson’s Branch contract was awarded to FTS who is working on Topmost Phase II

Viola

We are continuing construction with everything going fairly well.

Montrose

We are finalizing the loan application for Montrose.  Jeff has been working the annual numbers to bring them in within what Montrose has budgeted.  Once those issues are taken care of, the accountants and cost people will finish their work and we should be able to submit this application for approval.

We have approval on the interim financing and have submitted a contract to Montrose for the 2017 staking that needs to be done to be able to bid a contract out at the beginning of the year.

Lightstream

Lightstream continues to be very busy this year.  Mike and crew are working several projects at the same time.  Monticello Phase 5 and Winimac Phase 1 are progressing forward. 

Brent is reviewing and will be presenting Thomas’ cost estimate to the Lightstream board for approval.  This would be a several year project on their part.

Wabash

Mike Walter is now engineering a number of CLEC routes for Wabash. 

Wabash continues to supply us opportunities to work on various projects of theirs.  We have provided an estimate for a person to assist in managing all of the construction they have going. Doug Kirby has been assisting Mike in the staking of the projects in the area.

It looks like we have a resolution for the Orchardville project.  Wabash is willing to accept the drops as they are if Patriot documents the issues (going on), and signs off on all paperwork.

Fairpoint

Construction is well underway.  We have Kevin Glassford working the southern projects, and have brought in Mike Bandy from KY to assist with the northern projects. The southern projects should be completed by the middle of October.

Ballard

Floyd Construction will be built out on the mainline for Barlow and Bandana Phase 2.  Drops will still need to be worked and this will take several months.  At the same time, the 2017 Drop project will be started which means that we will have several of Floyd’s crews to keep up with.

Logan

Dunmor is finishing up with A&C moving to work on the Shaker Ridge project.  Jeff Cornelius is working both projects which is stretching him in covering them both.

We continue to work on the Logan RUS loan application and are shooting for a completion or submission date of August 30^th.  Greg has submitted an interim financing letter to RUS and we are following up with a 217 contract for the 2018 construction staking.  This will involve about 111 miles of build for 2018 under 2 separate contracts.

Duo

We continue to maintain 3 full time personnel at Duo assisting them with a variety of engineering efforts.  Steve Reed is also there but supports several other clients in addition to Duo.

Duo is one of Bluegrass Networks partners and has undertaken a portion of the overall build.  The guys are busy working through design and engineering issues associated with that project.

Bluegrass

We are working our way through RoW, pole attachment and make ready issues.  A&C was awarded the 1^st contract and will get the other ones awarded to them once we have the complete unit counts.

Russellville EPB

Thomas is in final design stages of this project.  He had a meeting with Lanny from REPB and they have worked out most of the issues.  We should have a pre-staking meeting soon with Bill Pennington heading up this effort.

Alabama Power

We have completed most of the detail engineering on the downtown Birmingham 19 miles.  There are still some questions, but everything has been delayed due to the hurricane duty that the AP people have been on.

Construction is underway on the Southside project with Darrell making sure everything is going smoothly.  The contractor did not have much experience in placing ADSS cable, so it has been a learning process with Darrell assisting.

Duck River Electric Cooperative

We have been meeting with Duck River and working through a number of design and build issues.  The original proposal response has changed to some degree as the client works through the services and offerings that they would like to have this fiber provide for them and their members.

Lonnie Wylie and Darrell Leipert have been working with John King to detail engineer the original 55 mile build and are working to get the pole attachment information so that we can get the loading analysis completed.

Kudos to Tom Brabant for working diligently with the DREMC personnel to get us the information we need as well.

John King has been working on keeping up with the client’s changes and modifications, so we are on top of what needs to be done for them.

Proposals

Pikeville

We are staying in touch with the Eastern Telephone people on this project.  We believe that we have a good chance of being selected for the engineering on this project, in partnership with a local engineering firm. It is believed that this probably would be a 2018 project at the earliest.

Lynch, KY

We are working with EKT&T to provide an estimate for the engineering of a FTTH project for the Lynch, KY area.

Ballard Mapcom

We provided pricing to Ballard to enter four of their exchanges into their Mapcom database. We are still waiting on them to make a decision.

Letcher County

We have been asked to come up with an estimated engineering cost to design and detail engineer a portion of Letcher County around the Line Fork area.

City of Richmond

Solarity, a project management group is working with the City of Richmond on a fiber build project study.  We are working with Solarity to provide the cost estimate.  We will be meeting with the City people in the next couple of weeks and it looks like this may be an opportunity to develop a good relationship.

Middle Tennessee

Andy Heins has been talking with Middle Tennessee regarding fiber deployment.  I am going to try to get down there and visit with them in the next month or so.

OTELCO

OTELCO to do design on a FTTH network for their exchanges in MO and AL.  They have indicated they have not made any decisions at this point.

One Finley Updates

Strategic Planning

We will be implementing the effort to start planning our projects better in Atlas.  The training will start in October and will primarily involve Newell, Suzy and Chris Cook.

Final Thoughts

We continue to be very busy with a number of new projects that have stretched our service area considerably.  As we move to finish out the year, we look to be busy right up into 2018.  I appreciate everyone’s hard work and extra effort now as we see a number of new projects starting.  I look forward to us continuing to be very busy through this year and on into 2018.

If you have anything you would like to add or see in this newsletter, please let me know and we will be glad to share anything that you see that is important to everyone.  -JJS