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UCANE Member of the Month
UCANE Contractor Phoenix Communications Specializes in Fiber-Optic Cable Installations and Repairs Both Above and Below Ground
First Generation Owner, Mark Langevin, Credits the Company’s Success to Hard Work and Paying Attention to his Employees
Mark Langevin and his daughter Meagan Langevin
Partial Overhead Fleet parked after a busy week
As a youngster born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mark Langevin attended David Prouty High School, a small public school located in the neighboring town of Spencer. Mark was a good student, but in the early 80s neither he – nor almost anyone else at that time – knew what a fiber optic cable was. But over the next 20 years there would be an explosion in the use of Fiber Optic technology, as that industry mirrored and followed along with the tremendous growth of home computers and cell phones.
Mark got his first exposure to the telecommunications business while working during summers with a small contractor at US Sprint. Starting as a laborer, he eventually was trained to be an apprentice cable splicer by the time he left school. Although still too young to visualize the big picture of telecommunications, Mark liked the work and he enrolled at Central New England College to pursue a degree in Electrical Engineering. He continued working summers at Sprint, and when the contractor he was working for left Sprint in 1986 to start his own business, Mark followed him.
His pursuit of a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering hit a snag in 1987 when Central New England College closed its doors during Mark’s senior year. At that point Mark took his Associate’s Degree and started working full time providing contract services to major telecommunication providers in New England. It wasn’t long before Mark was running a crew and rapidly advancing within the company. By 1990, he had been exposed to every part of the business and over the next 10 years was managing both the field and the office end of the company operations.
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The Rise of the Phoenix
Throughout the 90s fiber cable was replacing copper wires as the dominant product for transmitting data, and it was being installed as fast as it could be produced. People with knowledge of how to install, repair, and configure these new systems were in high demand. In 2000, Mark decided to venture out on his own and formed Phoenix Communications. With a brand-new Ford Econoline van, and a few basic splicing tools, Mark started working out of his garage in Hubbardston, MA. For the next two years the fledgling business did mostly small subcontracts with about six employees while Mark was busy banging on doors and introducing his business to major companies like National Grid, AT&T, and Verizon.
Phoenix Communications was offering to provide full-service fiber optic cable solutions on a cost-effective, rapid turnaround basis, headed up by a proven performer with 14 years of hands-on experience. Getting in the door during those early and hectic years of telecommunication growth was not so difficult, but could the company prove itself to be a consistent competitor and performer?
Mark’stimingforstartinghisnewbusinessatfirstlooked to be a major mistake as it ironically coincided with the famous DOTCOM bust of the early 2000s. Between 1995 and 2000 the Nasdaq Index had risen 400% to 5,014 as IPO’s became a popular vehicle for the masses, and investors bet heavily on telecommunications and internet stocks. That period later became known as the DOTCOM Bubble. But the explosion in spending (with borrowed money) far outpaced the early customer demand, and major companies in both sectors soon saw huge net operating losses. The stocks of these companies collapsed between 2000 and 2002 leaving many bankrupt creditors in their wake, including large companies doing the same work as Phoenix but who were overextended. The Nasdaq Index lost 78% of its value bottoming out at 1,114 in October of 2002.
The dramatic fall of these large telecom companies and contractors actually provided an opportunity for small and efficient companies like Phoenix. According to Langevin, Phoenix not only weathered the DOTCOM collapse, but was able to come out of it with a larger workload, and a new list of well financed and stable clients. By 2004, Phoenix had grown to over 25 employees with revenues exceeding $5M. As Mark likes to say, “Unlike the story in mythical legends, this Phoenix was able to rise up – but it did not fall.” Steady Growth
In 2001, Mark Langevin moved his business out of his garage and rented a small contractor’s yard and office in Worcester, MA. Soon his clients were looking for much more than just cable splicing. As Mark recalls, “I
New England Public Power Association Training Facility, Littleton, MA
New Fiber-Optic Installation in New Braintree, MA
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Storm Repairs at a Substation in MA
Vacuum Excavator Assisting Direct Bury Crew in Hartford, CT
Pulling 864 Fiber Cables at Night in Cambridge, MA
bought our first new bucket truck in 2003 so we could do aerial installations, and within the next year I purchased an excavator to meet our client’s demand for direct buried installations.”
Phoenix continued to grow steadily as the internet and Information Technology revolution rebounded after the DOTCOM crash. The company was becoming well known to the growing number of telecom giants operating in the Massachusetts area. According to Langevin, an early job that really put the name Phoenix on the map was the Longfellow Bridge Fire in May of 2007.
To the average commuter the iconic stone and steel bridge across the Charles River connecting Boston to Cambridge does not appear to be flammable. But when a homeless person sleeping under the bridge lit a small fire to stay warm, it ignited a mass of plastic ductwork and cables hidden below the bridge deck and created an immediate calamity for the local telecom industry. The ducts carried fiber optic cables that supported all the data and internet from every major carrier in the region. Multiple services were interrupted throughout Boston and Cambridge including most ofthecolleges,thefinancialdistrict,andevenlinkstoWashington and parts of the East Coast. The bridge was closed to traffic, including the MBTA’s red line train, as the fire was put out and the cable damage was assessed.
“We had a contract with one of the national carriers at the time,” says Mark Langevin, “and we were the first ones to respond to the site. It was a compact site and the City wanted to restore vehicular and train traffic the next day so there was barely enough room for our crews to work.” Phoenix brought in multiple crews to work around the clock and they pulled new underground cables below the 1,800 foot long bridge. The national carrier was up and running again within 24-hours. Every other major carrier with cable damage hired Phoenix to repair and replace their cables as well. According to Mark, “We worked there around the clock for a week to get these carriers connected again,” Mark stated with pride. “After that job, everyone in the industry knew about Phoenix. It was better than any ad campaign we could have created.”
After the Longfellow Bridge job, Phoenix experienced steady, but managed growth. The company invested heavily into equipment for both overhead and underground installations. In addition to more blue-collar field workers, Phoenix ramped up the engineering and project management side of the business to expand company capabilities and better serve their clients.
In 2013, Phoenix moved their, by then, 100 employee operation to Shrewsbury. The 4-acre site with a modern 35,000SF office/warehouse would give the company plenty of room to grow. That same year Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick made a personal visit to the Phoenix headquarters and congratulated the company for being one of the fastest growing small businesses in the state.
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Phoenix Today
Today Phoenix has grown to be the largest fiber optic solutions provider in New England. Their website lists the company as “Your local fiber optic solutions provider: Construction, engineering & support with the highest safety standards.” The company works throughout New England and New York and has recently opened an office in Virginia.
Their Shrewsbury yard houses a fleet of over 75 work trucks and bucket trucks and their large warehouse provides cover for miles of various cables and thousands of related parts in inventory. The company’s underground division boasts a dozen excavators, trench boxes, road plates, three custom vac trucks, and assorted compressors, pumps, and contractor tools. As this article was being written Phoenix was taking delivery on its fourth state-of-the-art new Vacuum Excavator.
While 160 field employees report for duty at 20-40 jobsites on a daily basis, another 60 engineers, designers, managers, and administrative staff fill the offices every day at 25 Bowditch Drive in Shrewsbury. A 2020 addition to the staff was Meagan Langevin, Mark’s daughter, and a graduate of Bryant College who works as a coordinator for the project management group. “I’m so proud of Meagan the way she is grasping this business,” beams Mark. “She has a real future here, and I’m just hoping she will allow me to play a few more rounds of golf next year,” he says with a wink.
“Timely responses and quality work is mission critical to satisfy our customers, but good employees are the key to successful company growth,” says Langevin. “I work hard at finding the right people. Attitude is as important as talent. We can develop talent. I’m an accessible and visible owner and I’m a big believer in teamwork and company pride.” Langevin encourages ideas from his employees and strives to create an office atmosphere that makes people want to come to work.
The ultimate sports fan, Langevin is an investor in the Worcester Pirates arena football team, is the prime sponsor for a race-car competing on the NASCAR circuit, and he relaxes at work with a virtual golf simulator or a friendly game of cornhole. “At Phoenix Communications we have a lot of sports outings to reward our employees,” says Mark. “You’ll find Phoenix employees at golf outings or attending almost every type of sporting event in the New England area. These events promote our teamwork concept and they help to develop great camaraderie.”
Phoenix crews still respond to splicing calls but are also tackling much bigger projects these days. According to Langevin the company recently completed several townwide fiber optic installations in Western MA that included nearly 100 miles of aerial installation and connections to hundreds of homes. Another project involved 2,000 feet of excavation and buried cable installation in Boston. One of the largest jobs ever undertaken by the company is currently underway as the firm is replacing 830,000 feet (157 miles) of cable, mostly in city streets through existing conduits, from Hartford to Providence to Boston.
“We perform varying scopes of work for both private and public owners,” says Meagan Langevin.
“But all of our project managers make sure that our clients are informed throughout the work and satisfied upon completion whether it be a $5,000 splice job or a $1M telecom project.”
So as Construction Outlook readers travel throughout New England, they might just see the Phoenix Communications Logo when they look up in the air – at a crew working on overhead wires – or when they look down in a trench – at a crew installing a new duct bank.
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