Building on Success

Facchina Group counts on IPC Technologies and ShoreTel for its voice communications.

In construction, a strong foundation is essential to the success of any project. That’s why Facchina Construction has built its communications infrastructure on ShoreTel and IPC Technologies.

Founded in 1987, Facchina Construction is one of the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area’s most respected providers of heavy/highway construction, concrete frames, site development and commercial building services. The organization has evolved to include Facchina Development, an investment and development management service firm, and Facchina-McGaughan, a general contracting firm. Together the three entities comprise Facchina Group, with offices in Maryland and South Florida.

The organization’s ShoreTel IP telephony systems help support its continued growth, and IPC provides the expertise and manpower to keep the systems running smoothly. According to David Wiese, Director of Information Technology for Facchina Group, IPC’s in-depth knowledge of ShoreTel equipment and willingness to lend a hand whenever needed sets the firm apart from other technology providers.

“I rely on IPC for their ongoing maintenance of the ShoreTel systems,” Wiese said. “And what’s good about this relationship is that I know I can call on them to provide other services if I need them. It’s very handy to have that backup.”

A Strong Footing
The relationship began about two years ago when Facchina Construction called on IPC to take over the support of its ShoreTel system. Soon after, another entity — Facchina Global Services — needed to establish separate offices. This group elected to purchase a ShoreTel system from IPC based upon the success of the technology within Facchina Construction.

“When we started the company it wasn’t cost-effective to have our own telephone system — we utilized Facchina Construction’s system,” said Jeff Jones, Project Manager, IT & Security Services, Facchina Global Services. “But because we’re a federal contractor it was a requirement that we completely separate from Facchina Construction from an IT perspective as well as a business perspective.

“Since we were already familiar with ShoreTel and it had been doing a good job for FCC, we went with ShoreTel. And because of the relationship with IPC, it also made sense to utilize their services.”

Facchina Global Services provides IT and security services to the federal government, DOD and the Intelligence Community, and thus has significant technical expertise in-house — expertise that Facchina Group leverages for its own IT needs as well. Nonetheless, the entire organization relies on IPC to provide an extra pair of hands when timelines are short.

“Here’s a perfect example,” Jones said. “Recently, on the Facchina-McGaughan side, we needed to replace their phone system with ShoreTel on an almost emergency basis. They had moved their offices, and it was deemed advisable at that point to just go ahead and do the migration. We were fortunate to be able to count on IPC to help us through that quandary.”

“Naturally this all took place during the holiday season,” Wiese said. “But the folks at IPC said, ‘We’re available. If you need to give us a call, give us a call. If you need to call me at home, here’s my number.’ ShoreTel is such a great system — it’s very intuitive and easy to set up — but some of the higher-end things that you don’t run into every day can be a little confusing. IPC was there to hold our hands through the install process.”

Form and Function
Facchina has been very pleased with the ShoreTel systems. The IP telephony technology makes it relatively easy and painless to add new locations to the voice infrastructure. Moving things around can be accomplished with a few mouse clicks.

“It will be even simpler when we transition Facchina Construction to IP phones,” Jones said. “The other organizations are 100-percent IP phones.”

ShoreTel’s technology also provides end-users with many time-saving features. The system coordinates with a user’s e-mail client to populate the phone directory, send voicemail messages to the e-mail inbox and more.

“When we first installed the ShoreTel product, everyone was concerned because we were getting a computerized phone system and it was very difficult to wrap their heads around that. They were worried that it would be hard to use,” Wiese said. “But they found out that it’s actually extremely easy. Once they’d used it for a week, then they were coming up to me and saying they didn’t ever want to get rid of it.”

Wiese and Jones say they have no plans to end the relationship with IPC. With the right technology partner and state-of-the-art communications equipment, Facchina has the foundation it needs to continue building upon its success.

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