As for Chris, he moved to Tucson after school and took a job in Field IT for a large construction firm, and that enabled him to get out of the office and work on projects like making sure the computers and communications functioned smoothly in the bottom of copper mines, like the Duval and Carlota. He eventually took a job transfer to the Valley and worked for the company doing the project at The Resort and Silveridge. Then, early this year, he and two colleagues decided it was time to open their own firm, ECU. The new company took over the parks project in late June.
By the time they took over, the parks’ HDTV and high-speed internet were working, but Chris and his team felt there were still improvements to be made. Since June, much of the work has been on the back-end equipment, but they’ve also had crews systematically going through the parks, upgrading the equipment and finishing up with the pedestals. Chris says, “You can see a difference. The system is more reliable and you see less pixelating. We have residents come out and tell us how much better it is.”
That progress means that some areas of the park lose service while the work is underway. “We give people notice,” Chris said, “but we have to shut it off while we work – after all, there’s actual electricity involved.”
One of the improvements is in the monitoring of the service. “We have monitoring software that tells us immediately if there’s a problem. There was a power outage the other day and we knew the minute the power was back on and had everything going again within minutes.”
