On page 22, you will find ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR’s biennial Profile of the Electrical Contractor, which has always made for interesting reading. Digging deep into the statistics, you will find that a large number of electrical contractors also do projects involving communications cabling, working with fiber optics and copper. 

That should not be a surprise. If you are installing electrical cabling in a building, why not also install the low-voltage copper and fiber optic cables for computer networks, security systems, building controls, etc.? That’s good revenue and easy to do when you are already working there. It is how many electrical contractors became involved in installing low-voltage cabling. 

A little personal history

I became aware of this trend in the late 1980s when I was invited to a few IBEW locals to give a talk about fiber optics. The first of them, at Local 3 in New York City, was to a crowd so large I felt like a rock star. Afterwards, I was surrounded by people questioning me about the specifics, especially how to get started.

At the time, my company, FOTEC, was making test equipment for practically all the computer companies, so much of the cabling ECs saw being installed in buildings was to support their networks. We were also running training seminars with some other companies in the fiber business that made cables, connectors, other hardware and sometimes networking equipment.

FOTEC’s seminars grew so large I started Fiber U, a week-long training conference held every summer. At the second Fiber U, I met Terry Coleman, who came to learn more about fiber. He later joined NJATC (now the Electrical Training Alliance) as the fiber expert.

At another fiber conference, I met the then-publisher of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTO­R. He was convinced that ECs should be adding fiber and other low-voltage cabling to their business portfolios and invited me to come speak at the NECA convention, and our partnership began. I brought Fiber U to the NECA convention until FOTEC was acquired by Fluke in 2001, and then I started the VDV conference with NECA.

When I went to my files on my columns in this magazine, I discovered that I became a monthly contributor in 2001, 25 years ago!

At that time, I also met A.J. Pearson, the dynamic head of the NJATC. He invited me to come train JATC instructors at the National Training Institute (NTI). I participated as the Fiber Optic Association (FOA), and FOA instructors have offered training at every NTI since. FOA will be there this month.

ECs are crucially important

About 40 locals offer fiber optics using the FOA curriculum as part of their apprenticeship program now. We work closely with Jim Simpson of the Electrical Training Alliance to keep the program up to date. And the locals have graduated thousands of FOA-certified fiber optic technicians from their apprenticeship programs, making it one of the largest fiber optic training organizations in the world.

While the fiber work done by ECs covers the full spectrum of premises and outside plant installations, several have made a big impression on me. One instructor we trained, Mike Yeager, sent us photos of his work repairing an optical power ground wire (OPGW) cut by a helicopter. He had to splice the OPGW and fibers on top of a tall (was it 150 feet?) transmission tower.

ECs are also instrumental in building data centers, which can be the primary focus of tech companies today. Data centers can consume gigawatts of electrical power for electronics and HVAC and need fiber optic connections, sometimes a million of them in a hyperscale one. Nobody is better suited for data center work than ECs because of their broad expertise and work ethic. The owners of data centers must be impressed; several ECs I know have been hired to run data centers after building them.

I don’t think many people understand how much fiber optic work ECs do or how comprehensive their training and experience is. They are a very important component of the fiber optic and low-voltage workforce.

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