Office Renovation Needed At BVU To Hold More Employees

BRISTOL, Va. – The addition of new employees has prompted plans for some remodeling at the offices of the city’s utilities provider.

Bristol Virginia Utilities recently awarded a $117,000 contract to low bidder True Line Construction of Bristol, Tenn., to make changes in two areas of BVU’s Lee Highway office complex, which opened in 2002.

“We’ll mainly be tearing out walls,” BVU President Wes Rosenbalm said Tuesday. “We’ve got more people working in our customer service area and our network operations center, so we need more space.”

During the past few months, BVU has added about 16 employees at its headquarters, Rosenbalm said. Most were hired to accommodate increased customer calls from BVU’s management of the M-I Connection cable system in Mooresville, N.C.

The work, which began Tuesday night, consists of remodeling five parts of the building, including accounting, customer service and network operations, said Travis Brooks of True Line Construction.

“The last phase is their training room will be upsized to accommodate about 150 people,” Brooks said.

The work is expected to take about six weeks to complete, Brooks said.

“We’ll be jockeying around people, so some of the work will have to occur at night,” Rosenbalm said.

Plans call for reusing as much carpeting and other materials as possible, Rosenbalm said.

“We are growing, and it’s not that it wasn’t anticipated,” he said. “Most of this [remodeling] will occur in our network operations center, which is our more technical customer service.”

The remodeling also is designed to accommodate future growth, Rosenbalm said.

BVU established a new business division last year to provide management and consulting for other cities and towns interested in offering telecommunications services. The utility is actively seeking additional customers for that division.

“Right now, there are three or four [communities] that appear to be serious. We may get one or none of them. That is a long process,” Rosenbalm said, adding that none of the deals are imminent.

A portion of the remodeling cost will come from the management fees paid by the North Carolina system, Rosenbalm said.

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