Ciara Crossan, Project Manager for our Community Fibre Build contract, joined the business in 2016 and worked through a variety of roles before being promoted to her current role. Ciara gives us an insight into her journey and her recent role with Community Fibre.
“I found myself in the telecommunications industry by chance and quickly realised how interesting it is to learn about how the world around us is getting connected and I genuinely enjoy being able to learn something new every day.
I started my journey with Kelly Group in July 2016 as a Project Coordinator working in the Virgin Media business department, in Kelly House, Wembley. Eventually, I moved onto our Virgin Media Major Programme Projects as Team Manager, then transferred over to our Openreach ONSA project as Back-Office Manager for Wembley and later Ashford. I got involved with our Community Fibre Build project as our ONSA contract came to an end and this new opportunity arose – I was delighted to be promoted to Project Manager.
Kelly Group was awarded our current Community Fibre Network Build contract during the first quarter of 2021. Scope of works includes building serviceable homes, by providing all network build processes prior to the actual installation to homes. We are proud to have 13 engineers completing network build works, including civils, test rod and rope, fibre blowing and fibre splicing. To date as a team, we connected just short of 25,000 homes and businesses across London, which is an incredible achievement for such a small team.
Community Fibre is London’s largest and fastest 100% full-fibre broadband, which, utilises its own network meaning it’s not dependent on any other output to feed its consumers. Community Fibre has won multiple awards for being the best ISP for both homes and businesses across London.
All our engineers complete in-house training in our state-of-the-art national training centre at Brimsdown. Community Fibre is installing its equipment on telecommunication poles owned by Openreach, therefore all engineers are required to be Openreach and PIA accredited. Alongside these accreditations, they receive training in TRR, subducting, fibre blowing and fibre splicing which can be utilised not only on our Community Fibre contract but across the business as a whole.
Once engineers complete their in-house training, they are all assigned to shadow an experienced engineer, in order to build their confidence and receive first-hand experience while working on the network. Once they’re working independently, we have multiple support channels available for engineers, ensuring they succeed within their new roles including our Field Agents who are present each day in the field to assist and support engineers where required. Our office staff is also a phone call away, if an engineer requires support. Since it’s a smaller contract we all know each other very well and try our best to support each other in any way possible.
The future looks bright for Kelly Group’s partnership with Community Fibre and we’re hoping to successfully assist the expansion of their network build project, to new areas within London.
Our success is a result of our engineers’ and office staff’s dedication and hard work, and I am excited to see what the future brings for us.
