It’s only Wednesday, but this has already been a big week for Don Doty and Patrick Moore. Within just two days the partners marked a milestone in their work to promote climber safety, announced the sale of another company and celebrated a lifetime achievement award for Doty.
On Monday, the National Association of Tower Erectors announced the incorporation of the National Wireless Safety Alliance, building upon the years of work that these two partners have done to establish safety protocols for tower climbers. The NWSA creates a national assessment and certification entity to promote safety through certification of climbers.
On Tuesday, Doty and Moore were able to share the news that FDH Velocitel has purchased Stainless, a structural engineering firm founded by the two partners. After selling their tower services business to Velocitel in 2013, Doty and Moore have now sold Stainless to the same buyer.
Also on Tuesday, Doty (pictured) won the Bill Carlson Lifetime Service Award at NATE Unite. Carlson won the inaugural award last year, and going forward the award will be presented annually to an individual who has made a significant and long-term contribution to the success of the NATE Mission.
FDH Velocitel’s Stainless buy motivated by upcoming spectrum auction
Stainless LLC was a designer and manufacturer of broadcast towers and had roughly $10 million in annual revenue. Doty and Moore closed the manufacturing plant in 2013, but retained the engineering operations. Now those operations will become part of FDH Velocitel, along with all the engineering drawings for the 7,500 broadcast towers Stainless has built since 1947.
FDH Velocitel wants the tower drawings in anticipation of the upcoming broadcast incentive auctions, which will give TV broadcasters the opportunity to auction some of their spectrum to wireless service providers in 2016.
“As part of that, they’re going to have an exercise called repacking,” said FDH Velocitel Chairman Jim Estes, who added that Congress has set aside $1.75 billion to reimburse the broadcasters for moving to different spectrum, or repacking.
“Everyone is selling off different pieces of spectrum, and then they need to make the free spectrum contiguous so they repack. They basically relocate the parts that are left in another part of the frequency band,” Estes said. Repacking often requires new antennas and in some cases changing locations, he said, all work for which his company will be uniquely positioned with the Stainless drawings in hand. Estes said that about half the broadcast towers in the United States are represented in the drawings his company is acquiring.
Wireless workforce
Estes said that FDH Velocitel is getting about 15 new structural engineers and broadcast tower workers through the Stainless acquisition. He said that recent workforce adjustments at his company have been necessary because of the cyclicality of the wireless infrastructure business, and because there is less demand for tower climbers in the winter.
Estes also noted that broadcast tower climber skill sets can be very applicable to cell tower modification jobs, adding that broadcast tower climbers are accustomed to handling extremely heavy antennas, and that as wireless operators move more equipment to the top of the towers, these workers should be ready.
