Zachary Lawson

Cox Communications, Phoenix, AZ

• Reviewed about 250 abandonment and encroachment requests a year against Cox approval guidelines, reading title reports, legal descriptions, recorded plats, and dedications through the Maricopa County Recorder and GIS viewer and checking engineering plans for conflicts with plant records in myWorld.
• Talked with property owners to confirm the scope of each request, drafted approval letters from a standard template when requests met the guidelines, conditioned or denied those that did not, and escalated easement conflicts to Construction Support.
• Owned Cox's Phoenix-region joint-use program as the sole coordinator for six years, managing all pole transfer, abandonment, and encroachment work.
• Entered roughly 2,000 new pole transfer notices a year from APS, SRP, and Lumen into RAMT and submitted new pole attachment applications.
• Processed 86 to 480 pole transfer actions a month and closed work out the same week, holding zero standing backlog.
• Made site visits to verify transfers with photo documentation and found about 30% of pole owner status notices inaccurate, giving Cox the data to avoid unnecessary crew dispatches.
• Trained incoming SRP personnel to identify communications attachments and trained Cox permitting staff and RAMT users.

Cox Communications, Phoenix, AZ

• Submitted 50 to 100 permits a month for work in public right-of-way and utility easements, including railroad crossings, across Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale, Chandler, Maricopa County, ADOT, Roosevelt Water Conservation District, Coolidge, Casa Grande, and Wickenburg.
• Assembled permit packages with applications, engineering mapping from design firms, and fee payments; hand-delivered submittals and picked up permits at city offices.
• Managed correction cycles on engineering plans caused by separation conflicts with other utilities, routing redlines to design firms and resubmitting, and resolved rejected or disputed permits directly with the reviewing agency or railroad.
• Met weekly with project managers to align permit status with construction schedules; trained colleagues on permitting and RAMT entry.
• Completed all permitting for five underground and aerial dark fiber ring projects from Casa Grande and Coolidge to Wickenburg, supporting project managers through installation.

Cox Communications, Phoenix, AZ

• Met property owners on site to scope line extensions, stayed calm with an angry owner while explaining the only workable route and its cost, and handed specifications to construction coordinators.
• Monitored hundreds of active developments weekly through ground prep, joint trench, curbing, streets, and home construction so coordinators could schedule plant installation on time.
• Absorbed a growing territory as the team went from four techs to one, ending with sole coverage from Wickenburg to Casa Grande.