Today we are going to delve deeper into the nuts and bolts of the networking industry. With us today is Pervis Conway, who is founder, CEO, and President of Construction-CAD Solutions (CCS). CCS is an engineering and construction firm based in Chicago that cut its teeth on the HFC buildouts of the dot-com era. Today the minority-owned firm is busy doing the engineering work necessary for operators to build out fiber backhaul networks to the wireless towers and small cells that power today’s growing mobile data tsunami.
TR: How did Construction-CAD Solutions get started, and how did it become what it is today?
PC: CCS has been in business for 17 years now, and it has grown to be one of the largest telecom engineering firms in the Chicagoland market. I started it in my apartment bedroom in 1998 doing hybrid fiber/coax engineering projects for TCI (now Comcast), back in 1999-2000. They were doing a huge upgrade here at that time, building out the Chicagoland market with HFC. We then shifted into a maintenance company for a good portion of the last 10 years. Then two and a half years ago we began doing fiber deployment planning, fiber engineering, and feasibility studies for other major cable companies and CLECs. We’ve grown from past experiences into a go-to company for OSP network information.
TR: What made you decide to go independent and start your own firm?
PC: I came from humble backgrounds. I started out working on the fiberoptic sections of toll plazas for one of the first companies to start the electronic toll collection you see around the country today. That company went out of business, and I went independent for a year and a half. Then an opportunity came up while I was working out of my apartment to work with TCI (now Comcast). I worked day and night, doing the work of 4-5 people to keep up and prove that I wanted to be a part of this industry. It started off with just me, then I had a partner, then a third, and today we are over 100, which is a pretty good size for Chicago.
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