Network Connex is one of those organizations that you’ve never heard of but quite literally keeps our modern world humming along. Without its services, vast areas of our day-to-day life simply cease to function. Innovative clients like Microsoft and Google couldn’t be as impactful without Network Connex’s expertise, and gridiron fans might be interested to know they wired State Farm Stadium in Phoenix for Super Bowl LVII. So what exactly does Network Connex do? While the website states Network Connex brings “best-in-class, mission critical network design and deployment solutions for the world’s most sophisticated networking and data infrastructure companies,” that doesn’t tell the whole story. Network Connex solves the toughest communications infrastructure challenges in the U.S. and beyond.

In addition to planning and design/engineering services, actually installing communications infrastructure requires highly-skilled construction technicians who dig trenches and install aerial fibers. Construction technicians must travel onsite to implement and execute the design and engineering plans for projects from the massive data centers to the tiny EV charging stations you see sprouting up across the country. Simply put, the work Network Connex does keeps us connected – and what is more critical to people and organizations in 2024?

Critical infrastructure projects and travel logistics

Because of the nature of their business, technicians and employees live and travel across the country. This requires travel coordination across multiple complex projects, and that’s where Ashley Klinginsmith comes in. Ashley works for Network Connex as a Supply Chain Specialist, which means, among other responsibilities, she’s tasked with the logistics of getting busy technical staff to job sites around the world, booking three quarters of Network Connex’s trips. “If we’re doing our job right, you’ll likely never know we’ve been there, but behind the scenes we play a critical role in people’s lives.”

Of the people Ashley coordinates travel for, most are technicians. When it comes to the kind of work that Network Connex does, getting technicians out to sites is vital to the company’s success. “It's critical,” Ashley says. “There are some people that we can hire locally, but obviously we prefer to send full time employees to the job sites. It’s critical that we can get these people where they need to be when they need to be there, sometimes on short notice.”

And since no job is exactly the same and Network Connex has projects all over the U.S. as well as internationally, it’s a lot of logistics to coordinate. Usually two technicians will work on one job for two weeks at a time, and then go home.  If it’s for a couple of months, technicians will  go back and forth every two weeks. Some jobs only require one person where they can go for a couple of days, do something and then hit another job. And there's a handful of jobs where there's seven or eight people on site at a time.

Ashley worked in fashion before making the switch to Network Connex. While this might not seem like an obvious career progression, pandemic layoffs in the fashion industry inspired her to pivot. And with Network Connex’s Fairhaven team, eventually she found her home. 

A dynamic travel team requires dynamic support

It turns out her background serves her very well managing the travel schedules of a large team. She spends a lot of her time coordinating schedules for technicians. “You book flights and a hotel for people on the team, plans change, you edit, and you do it again” – just like fashion designs! The nature of the work means you have to be able to thrive in a changing environment at all times. Other aspects of her job include backend reconciliation of car rentals, negotiating hotel rates and, she says: “spreadsheets, many, many spreadsheets.” 

Before Network Connex started the relationship with AmTrav, they tried using another corporate travel platform but it was so clunky that nobody used it.  Instead Ashley worked exclusively within her world of Excel spreadsheets, but, based on the project timelines she managed and the number of travelers spread out across the country, it was “a nightmare!”