Carriers Have a Different Set of Priorities than Tower Climbers

Recently, on our LinkedIn Blog an industry professional posed the question: why are crews still required to do work at night? Crew leader at PDQ’s point was that it would be much safer for work to be done during the day. With the increase in tower accidents over the past few years, it’s a valid question to ask. Shouldn’t we eliminate unsafe work practices? This week in Clinton, Oklahoma KCCU posted a notice on their website explaining to listeners that an antenna needs to be removed from the tower, repaired, and then replaced. This would cause outages from the 9th-11th. While this may not be ideal for mobile carriers, it’s an option. It won’t be the end of the world if cell service is a little slow that day if the alternative is to put workers at risk. Working at night is a common practice though, according to David Trout, owner at TroutINV. As professionals in this industry it is up to us to ensure we use crews that are qualified to work at night under head lamps,” Trout explains. He suggests that working at night isn’t for a newcomer. Michelle Resch, owner at Infinite Wireless Solutions, said, “I think it continues to speak to the carriers priorities. They are so far and safely removed from what happens in the field. We should have skilled workers doing the appropriate jobs. But when schedules are aggressively driven by the carriers, job prices continue to decline, it only seems to make logical sense that the injury counts are going to continue to climb.” Let us know what you think by logging onto our LinkedIn Group and sharing your opinion. Should tower climbers work at night or is it an unsafe practice?