1. ProjectExamples
Pete Cabell
1. Project: Bay Transceiver Station (BTS) Refurbishment
Budget: $2,850,0000 Average cost to refurbish and ship each BTS: $25,000
Length: 14 Months
Project Team: National Field Service Organization and the
Lucent and Motorola Refurbishing Teams
Tools & Methodologies: Microsoft Project, Excel Database Reporting,
Waterfall Project Planning
Scenario
The Bay Transceiver Station (BTS) is an electronic device located at the base of every cell
site antenna tower. It receives wireless signals and transfers the signal to the wire line
network. BTSs were configured with a maximum of 3 voice carriers. The more carriers,
the more simultaneous calls the BTS supported. BTSs cost from $125,000 to $250,000
depending on the carrier configuration. Each carrier had a value of $40,000.
New Data Service
When Sprint introduced email and Internet service to its mobile phones customers, it
deployed EVDO (Evolution Data Only) service to BTSs via a data carrier. Adding a data
carrier was possible only if the BTS had no more than 2 voice carriers and an available
open slot for the data carrier. BTSs configured with 3 carriers had to be replaced with a
newer, more robust BTS.
An Idea for Significant Savings
Sprint’s Wireless Site Construction Team anticipated they would have to replace hundreds
of BTS that had no available capacity to enable EVDO service. The team planned to sell
the old BTSs to used equipment dealers for approximately $0.15 on the dollar. I identified
an opportunity to significantly save construction costs by reusing the swapped out
BTSs. This idea quickly evolved into a refurbishing program to ship the old BTS from its
cell site location to a refurbishing center, and then back into the field for reuse.
Challenges and Opportunities
This project presented numerous challenges to success and opportunities for creative
problem resolutions. The equipment had to be removed from its site with minimal damage
or lost/cannibalized parts; shipped to a remanufacturing facility intact; fully rebuilt, tested
and documented to work like new; and finally shipped to a new site complete with all
necessary equipment needed for installation. The Field Service Operations (FSO) team
strongly resisted utilizing used equipment due to years of previous failed attempts trying to
get used equipment salvaged from one cell site to work at another site, which wasted time,
effort and caused havoc with their own installation schedules. This problem became the
driver to develop a robust solution.
Full Control and Leadership

2. I was responsible for every aspect of this program: Developed the business case;
Developed the scope and project plan details to rebuild the BTSs with Lucent and
Motorola; Negotiated the refurbishment contracts; Managed schedules for BTS removals,
shipping and rebuilding; Identified the new cell sites where the equipment was sent for
reuse. I also managed the continuous improvement process as unforeseen problems
developed during the project. Improvements included adding testing reports and high
resolution photographs of the BTS interior to verify for the field team that each unit was
shipped in working order and with all equipment needed for the new installation.
The most difficult part of this project was convincing and motivating the FSO team to use
the rebuilt equipment. It took a considerable amount of explaining and developing trust to
demonstrate the refurbishing concept worked and would not delay new site installations. I
was able to get every FSO manager who utilized this equipment to see how they shared in
the cost savings to help Sprint minimize construction expense to become a more
competitive company.
Savings Realized
Each refurbished BTS installation saved an average of $100,000. In the 14 months I led
this project, 115 BTSs were reutilized and savings totaled more than $10 Million.
2. Project Description: E|Solutions Data Center Build-out, AAV Room
Budget: Unbudgeted:$22,500
Length: 4 Months
Project Team: 14 Internal Sprint Organizations, the LEC, the General
Contractor, Equipment Vendors
Tools & Methodologies: Microsoft Project, Excel Database Reporting, Agile
Project Planning
Scenario
Sprint rushed to build ten data centers at the height of the Internet boom. When the
centers did not complete construction as scheduled, the E|Solutions Program Managment
team and I were brought into the project to mitigate any aspect of the build causing
delays. One project I led started 4 months prior to opening the first data center in Atlanta.
The Sprint team responsible for designing the data centers realized that Alternate Access
Vendor (AAV) rooms were left out of the original design plans. The purpose of an AAV
room is to provide a location for other Internet service providers to terminate their circuits
and allow Sprint to initiate circuits to connect to customer equipment for redundant Internet
connectivity if the Sprint service ever failed.
Initiate and Plan the Project
My task began by leading joint application design sessions with the 14 different Sprint
organizational teams with responsibility to define the requirements necessary to develop
the AAV room and the process for how AAV circuits should be brought into the data
center. With input from the team, I created the scope of requirements and defined the

3. plan for organizational responsibilities, dependencies and hand-offs required to complete
the AAV room and deliver AAV circuits.
Plan Complications
Slowing down the task of building the room was the landlord who had constructed his own
AAV room adjacent to the data center facility and attempted to forcibly require Sprint to
use his room for any AAV circuits coming into the data center. I engaged Sprint’s team to
document the technical limitations of the service the landlord planned to offer: Built outside
of the restricted access of the data center, the landlord’s AAV room was situated too far
away from the customer raised floor space for the circuit to carry viable internet service.
Sprint’s legal staff was also brought in to convince the landlord drop his requirement for
Sprint to use his AAV service.
Delivering Broadband Service
To enable alternate Internet service providers to deliver their service, the first technical
requirement was to get the Local Exchange Carrier, Verizon, to deliver OC48 broadband
service. Time was the greatest hurdle to getting this service installed. Broadband requires a
special LEC construction crew and lead times are long, typically several months. Working with
my Verizon counterpart, I was able to sufficiently explain the need to expedite delivery due to
the large number of customers the data center expected to attract, the revenues projected,
and the impending opening of the center. Verizon agreed to expedite their installation and
waved construction costs because of the anticipated revenue from the broadband service.
Building the Room
Building the room was the easiest aspect of the project. The General Contractor was already
on site with their crews, making it a quick process to build a fiber vault to connect Verizon’s
OC48 and run conduits to the AAV room. The physical room build-out for electricity, lighting,
and the remaining details were finished quickly.
Ready for Business
In the space of 4 months, I brought together the diverse silos of Sprint’s internal organizations
to agree on what technical services were needed to deliver the AAV room requirement for
redundant Internet service for future customers and to translate their decisions into an
actionable plan to build the room. I also delivered a plan to organize the activities of these
organizations with sequential steps when AAV service was requested. I engaged Sprint’s legal
team to fend off a landlord wanting to get into the middle of Sprint’s business, and I directed
the General Contractor to build the facilities to support the service. While there was
considerable activity to create the room, the facilities costs came to only $22,500. The AAV
room was ready when the Atlanta data center opened and the plan was used to construct
similar facilities for the other nine data centers.
3. Project Description: Warehouse Closures
Length: 10 Months
Project Team: Field Service Operations, SupplyChain Management, Sprint
Reverse Logistics
Tools & Methodologies: Microsoft Project, Agile Project Planning

4. Scenario
Sprint requested Ericsson to manage the closure or downsize regional warehouses Sprint
was paying rent for. The requirement involved organizing and packing reusable wireless
equipment for shipment to a national warehouse location; organizing and packing
unusable wireless equipment for shipment to a Sprint Reverse Logistics location for
disposal; and relocating any remaining equipment needed for on-going use to a new
location, all prior to the warehouse lease expiration.
This project addressed more than 30 regional warehouse locations across the country with
staggered lease expirations dates. When a warehouse was not turned back to the landlord
on time, it resulted in a sharp rent increase until the location was emptied and returned to
the landlord. Before I joined the project, several warehouse locations were not vacated on
time. The rent increases that followed greatly displeased senior managers at Sprint and at
Ericsson. When several warehouses over a short period of time were not turned back to
landlords, I was hired to fix the situation.
The Cause of the Problem
Following years of budget reductions, the Field Service Operations (FSO) team
experienced numerous rounds of head count reductions aimed at achieving an efficient,
minimally staffed team responsible for maintaining Sprint’s network assets in field
locations. Providing on-going maintenance for network field locations absorbed nearly all
of the teams’ scheduled available time. In fact, FSO field technicians were responsible for
keeping close track of their work and the time it took them to perform it to verify they had
no unnecessary slack in their daily schedule. Projects like the Warehouse Closure
competed for the team’s small remainder of available time and were considered by FSO to
have a significantly lesser priority than their ongoing network maintenance work.
A Lack of Resources
This project was failing due to the inability to get Ericsson FSO teams to clear out their
warehouse prior to lease expirations. The previous project manager had held repeated
conference calls with the FSO teams responsible for each warehouse to announce the
lease expiration date and discuss the need for FSO to manage all the remaining
equipment they would no longer hold on to. As FSO saw it, organizing and getting ready
to move out of warehouses packed with equipment of questionable usability was a task
they had little or no time to address. Despite the angry responses from Sprint and senior
Ericsson managers, the FSO organization continued to shrug off the work.
When I was brought into this project, I interviewed both the original Project Manager and
the FSO Regional Managers to learn why the project goals were not being met. The
Project Manager explained that the Regional Managers knew what was expected of them,
but felt justified to push off the effort to performing this task due to their overwhelming
workload. Even though the Project Manager had escalated the problem to senior
managers on numerous occasions, progress did not take place.

5. The FSO Regional Managers verified they did not have sufficient time to complete their
daily maintenance tasks to keep the Sprint network running and also sort through the
warehoused equipment and to ship it to its intended destination, even though the FSO
organization had committed to do the work before the project began and had received
requests to complete the tasks months in advance of the lease expiration. The FSO
Operations team also had no idea how to resolve the resource shortage they faced.
Resource Resolution
My suggestion was to hire local Manpower resources to work at the warehouses for
several days until all the equipment was organized and packed it for its proper disposition.
This work could be directed by the FSO Regional Managers who typically worked on site.
To protect against the possibility of liability from the hired workers, the Ericsson Supply
Chain Management (SCM) organization took on the management for the day laborer
hiring through their established network of insured vendors.
Planning and Project Execution
With the resolution of available labor resources, I planned out a reusable template of
scheduled actions for the FSO team to follow and complete to be ready to be out of a
warehouse prior to the end of its lease. This included detailed tasks such how and when
to order shipping supplies from Ericsson’s Supply Chain Management group; how to
complete forms to return equipment to Sprint Reverse Logistics; instructions to disconnect
utilities; as well as options for obtaining a new, smaller and less expensive facility when a
warehouse was absolutely necessary.
After providing individualized plans for the FSO to follow, I stayed in regular contact with
FSO managers to verify they completed their incremental tasks on time and stayed on
track to exit their warehouse as scheduled. With these plans and contacts in place, the
project never experienced another late warehouse closure.