Tim Berry and Tara Day make a great team, on and off the tower. The two tower technicians have become one of the most productive crews ever sent up a tower at Embark Telecom Group.
“They go out and do the work of a four-person crew. Day in, day out, they are very efficient,” said Jim Barone, President at Embark Telecom Group.
Berry has been a foreman for the telecom industry for about nine years. He joined Embark in August of 2019, and began running crews. “Berry has the most incredible sense of urgency, a sense of pride in everything he does. He truly cares about everything he does when he builds a site,” Barone said.
Day, 35, and Berry, 35, started dating in 2020, and he noticed that she had a lot of the qualities that would make her an asset to a tower crew. He recommended her to Barone, who was very impressed and hired her in 2021. “She was very energetic and very hungry to learn,” Barone said.
Day went through training, received her certifications and began going out with the tower crews. Then she started climbing towers and really started to enjoy it. She quickly became very efficient, according to Barone. “She is very meticulous,” he said. “I would put her up against the best of the best. She just understands the industry. She can troubleshoot, and she’s phenomenal on the ground with PIM testing.”
At the time that Day began climbing, Embark’s four-person crews were working “insane” hours, according to Barone, and it was still difficult for the company to make money. One day, Berry came up with the “crazy idea” of forming a two-person crew with Day for work on certain towers that had lower RAD centers and that didn’t involve very complicated builds needing a third set of hands.
The combination of Day and Berry on the tower has exceeded expectations, according to Barone. “Every time we send them out there, they do the work in fewer hours than a four-man crew and their work is very clean,” he said.
Barone credits the success of Day and Berry to their chemistry. “With Tara coming in as a true green hand, not knowing a thing about telecom, she learned from Tim the way he likes to work,” he said. “It’s a great dynamic.”
Together, the two have built over 200 sites for DISH Wireless, which is one quarter of Embark’s total for the mobile network operator. As the DISH build has slowed, Day and Berry have been doing a lot of maintenance work and optimization work for the MNO, which is easy for them because they are so familiar with the project.
Because of the success of Day and Berry, Barone’s thinking on crew size has changed. Now, Embark uses two-person crews for 80 percent of its work. As a result, the company has seen an increase in its profitability, cutting 30 percent of its costs on every project where it runs a two-person crew.
“We do a lot of tiger team work, so we don’t necessarily need that third person,” Barone said. “It just doesn’t make sense for us to waste all those man hours and all that labor time now. Day and Berry have shown us what is possible.”
Of course, not every two-person tower crew is going to have the same relationship as Day and Berry, which might be a good thing. “How he works with his girlfriend all day, every day, is beyond me. I couldn’t do that,” Barone said. “But they do it. They make it work. And it’s really been a great success story for us. They’re our number one team.”
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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