Lowe’s Companies, Inc., often shortened to Lowe’s, is an American retail company specializing in home improvement. Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, the company operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada.
Project Case Study
Lowe’s was in drastic need of a network upgrade across all their North America stores, changing out old, outdated Wireless Access Points, to modern mesh, AC Wireless Access Points. With nearly 2,200 stores across all 50 states, this was a massive task. The project’s second phase started as the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up in March of 2020, and the phase needed to be completed by September. Each upgrade at each store was to take place Sunday through Thursday, with a 5pm kick off, until completion, ensuring the store was operational by 6am when the store was to open the following day. The problem, other firms were coming up short when it came to completing on-time and deploying qualified technicians during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic; this is where SpecGravity came in.
SpecGravity’s team quickly supplied technicians nationwide, completing 5 stores each night in 5 different cities, with a crew of 2-3 technicians per store, skilled in network upgrades, operating cherry picker and scissor lifts, and completing data and fiber terminations. Our teams from across the country would perform the work, then perform Knowledge Transfers to teams in other areas that would be starting soon.
Our teams inventoried equipment, installed MDF equipment, prepared outside of the stores ready for core drilling necessary for installation of new WAPs, removed old WAPs, and replaced with new ones, all while working with the the Lowe’s IT Department on a shared Bridge to ensure success and timelines were met.
While no project is without issues, how they’re handled is what makes the difference. Some issues we ran into ranged from inventory not showing up as planned, to technicians becoming infected with COVID and requiring quarantine. One way we combated COVID infection, was to keep a secondary team trained and in queue to ensure success.
In summary, the project was a success, and our teams were able to deploy and scale rapidly, during a time when the COVID pandemic was ramping up, and it was difficult to find qualified staff willing to work.