"Can you hear me now?"

Those words resonate throughout North America for millions of cell phone users, but what helps it work along with the wandering techno-geek is Bechtel Telecommunication's National Telecommunications Zoning Matrix - NTZM.

NTZM facilitates the siting of cell phone towers, antennas, dishes and other Radio Frequency (RF) technology that drives the wireless telecommunications industry. Like the industry itself, Bechtel Telecom- munications is growing quickly with nearly seven times the revenue of its nearest competitor and nearly 60,000 cell sites built since 1996 for major carriers including AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Vodafone and Sprint.

Even more noteworthy is the total reach of Bechtel's innovative NTZM product: It has been used in 1700 municipal and county jursidictions that govern approvals and regulate operation of cell towers. Of course, the level of review and operating requirements varies substantially from one locality to another. With NTZM being applicable to any level of local regulation, its inherent flexibility adds to the product's dominant market share.

According to Ilona Hogan, global manager of Site Acquistion for Bechtel Telecom, NTZM is used in conjunction with RF data to "alleviate extensive pre-application work on sites." Among the many advantages the matrix delivers are speed to market and gap coverage, which are prime objectives of the firm's telecom clients. The system has advanced global positioning and other management features embedded in it, enabling other key functions like tracking special market requirements, estimating costs and time frames for sites anywhere, determining how specific jurisdictional requirements such as stealthing (concealing cell towers) add to site acquisition costs, providing the ability to project costs based on averages run through the matrix, and updating for client personnel on legal and regulatory requirements.

Hogan recently incorporated Six Sigma process management and continuous improvement approaches into NTZM, as well.

Cheryle Wilson, Legal and Regulatory coordinator for the firm, which has a global team of more than 200 professionals supporting the matrix, explained that NTZM's key advantage is cost avoidance. "It save a lot of time and trouble, court costs and regulatory approvals and facilitates decisions around sometime-severe environmental, zoning and health regulations," she observed.

While the more than 500 pages of detail and data that comprise NTZM make it a sophisticated business development tool, its application yields remarkably simple results. It has become the most effective tool to show where towers and other RF transmitters can be built and installed (even in palm trees!). At the same time it shows what the specific process of approval is within a given locality - which is especially helpful in the cell phone companies' decisions on where to fill coverage gaps, and how zoning restrictions affect the outcomes of permit approvals. It is also a risk management tool because the providers can assess whether costs and regulations are worth the effort to build on certain sites, or to seek alternate locations.

Engineering News Record magazine recognized Bechtel as the number one telecom on its top 25 list for 2003. Considering the untold value realized through cost and time savings, as well as a plethora of other efficiencies built into NTZM - not to mention the wider benefits of business and consumer technological advances - it's no small wonder that the company has also become a finalist for the CoreNet Global Innovators Award. And it just might mean that guy in the gray jump suite will never go away.

– Richard Kadis