Tech Leaders: The Prize Project Managers of Quantum Fiber

Meet the industry professionals with expertise to help keep Quantum Fiber internet installs at multifamily communities on track.

They show up at the office the same time as field crews—usually right around sunrise. They speak the specific languages of people from a wide spectrum of jobs: business, tech, engineering and construction equipment and processes, real estate, geography, city planning, and the client developer, builder, management firm, or multifamily property owner.

As Quantum Fiber project managers for residential technical implementations, they do the heroic work that makes new or overbuild fiber internet deployments successful.

We’ll meet two project managers: Lauren Daniels, the lead project manager for Idaho multifamily and Montana, who lives and works in Boise and Wendy Lofton, a lead project manager for Arizona and New Mexico who has been a company employee for more than 25 years, and resides and works in Phoenix. They consistently strive to outperform expectations in a high-pressure role in the industry.

Says Daniels, “Wendy and I are in charge of making sure that residents have WiFi ready for instant activation service from the minute they walk through the door of their new home.”

“We are part of a team that drives these projects from concept to life. When we’re assigned to an implementation, it’s typically no more than a dirt field. And there’s no better feeling than signing off on a connected multifamily building or single-family home community,” says Lofton.

Coping with the tangle of outside entities

One of the Quantum Fiber project managers’ key responsibilities is working with the internal teams that are responsible for coordinating with the various local governments and agencies to get permissions to install fiber within their jurisdictions.

This can be an extraordinarily complex undertaking.

For example, says Lofton, the metropolitan area known generically as Phoenix, is composed of several cities. “Each of these municipalities has its own codes and thus requirements,” says Lofton.

Two types of permits are needed for a typical fiber build: aerial and underground. Aerial permits would cover above-ground things like telephone and electrical power infrastructure. Underground permits are when fiber involves digging in the earth. “In Idaho, for example, Idaho Power owns all the telephone poles, so we must submit any permit requests to them,” says Daniels. “But say we need a bore permit to dig under a canal in the vicinity of Caldwell. We’d need to go to the city for that.”

Sometimes the terms for getting timing right can be a little, well, idiosyncratic. Daniels remembers a plot of rural land acquired by a builder with the intention of developing housing sometime in the future. Since its plans were indefinite, the builder temporarily leased the land to a local farmer. But when the builder decided to make the project happen—and gave Quantum Fiber the green light to start its work—”our hands were tied. We couldn’t put the fiber underground until the vegetables were harvested,” says Daniels. Although this did delay the schedule a bit, she now laughs at the situation. “Eventually, the produce was picked, and we could move forward.”

Lauren Daniels

Together as a team

Although organizationally they belong to different business units within Quantum Fiber and are geographically spread out across the country, “We always have each other’s backs,” says Daniels regarding her internal peers of project managers. “If Wendy has an urgent issue arise, I will immediately drop everything and jump in.”

“This is truly the strongest, most knowledgeable, and most cohesive team I have ever worked with,” says Lofton. She remembers a time when she was in the middle of a big multifamily unit complex build. The supplier had sent them a large quantity of wiring labeled “24 fiber cable” but in fact was a 12 fiber cable.

“Twenty-four fiber cable means the fiber-optic cable contains 24 individual fibers. Twelve fiber cable only contains 12 individual fibers. That mistake had the potential to delay our schedule,” she said. So, Lofton sent out an SOS. Her network of other Quantum Fiber project managers around the country were able to locate the correct product, and have it shipped to her location without missing a beat in the schedule.

Wendy Lofton

Their road to arriving to the project manager role

It takes a lot of experience, technical knowledge, and just plain savviness to succeed as a project manager.

Daniels earned a Bachelor of Science in geography and urban planning. She also minored in housing and real-estate economics. While in school, she did multiple internships to get hands-on experience, and at 19, worked on a low-income housing program as the liaison between a nonprofit company and the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she was attending university.

“I was charged with making sure standards were met and working with the builders to ensure that all units were ready to go,” she says. “That was the real start to my career.”

After graduation, she had various stints in hospitality and eventually, after moving to Idaho, was hired by a local builder to bring new multifamily community complexes to market.

“I built 16 communities in two and a half years here in Boise,” says Daniels. Then COVID hit. “I asked myself if I wanted to do this forever,” she says now. Perpetually in search of professional and personal growth, she asked the Quantum Fiber sales representative who worked with her at one of her properties about job opportunities. “I’m nothing if not persistent. And eventually I got the project manager role.”

Lofton also constantly sought opportunities for growth throughout her career. With a Bachelor of Science degree in hotel and restaurant management, she first held a variety of roles at different companies: hotel sales manager, incentive travel company reprogram manager, even a commercial insurance underwriter. “But I hadn’t found anything that felt like home, or which truly utilized my skills,” says Lofton. “After joining the company in a sales position and moving into different roles, it was suggested that I would probably find a project manager role rewarding,” Lofton says. She was subsequently selected, and “it indeed has turned out to be very rewarding,” she says.

High-stakes, high satisfaction

Both Daniels and Lofton concur: although they might start every workday with a plan, it never seems to work out as expected.

“I was joking with Lauren earlier that I’m not really a project manager so much as a problem manager,” says Lofton. “That’s because in any new build, unforeseen challenges inevitably arise, and it’s our job to fix them.”

Yet they both flourish in the high-stakes environment, and both possess the agility to deal with it, and enjoy the adrenaline rush that accompanies it.

It’s thus natural that both women will always seek new challenges. Happily, both feel that Quantum Fiber will continue to provide them with opportunities to stretch themselves.

“I am the type of person who, once I conquer something, I’m ‘okay, it’s time to learn something new so I can continue to grow,’” says Daniels. “For that reason, Quantum Fiber, a Lumen Technologies brand, is a great place to be. I’ve worked for multiple companies, but Lumen is where I feel at home. And there’s always opportunities for growth here.”

Lofton agrees. “Like Lauren, I value learning and growing and Lumen allows you to do that.” The project manager job is always changing because the technology is always changing and improving, she says.

“This requires us to continuously learn new things and to keep advancing our skills and knowledge of quickly evolving technologies. It’s a very rewarding place to be,” says Lofton.

Check out these related resources:

• Tech Leader: Serena Rhuman, President of Fortified Property Solutions
• FAQ: Who will support my project?
• Fiber installation: 5 stage process from design to implementation