Todd Gunther
CONSTRUCTION Supervisor
Growing up on a farm in Upstate New York, Todd Gunther is no stranger to ingenuity and hard work. As a youngster he was often curious how things worked and would create alterations for improvements on various things like his bicycle, four wheelers or tractors. This creative thinking has served him well throughout his life and career path.
Todd worked on his family farm full time until 1992, at which time he took a job as a laborer with a telecom contractor. By 19 he was promoted to foreman, leading crews on out-of-town telecom projects and started splicing cables and building to the home projects.
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So, what brought Todd to Kansas you ask? Love of course! In 1995 Todd met his now wife Cassandra, who soon
moved from New York to Kansas to attend KU. He traveled back and forth to visit and look for work. In January of 1997 he had two interviews, one with a company doing excavation in Lawrence and the other with K&W Underground. The sales pitch during the interview set K&W apart and he could not refuse the job offer, making the leap from New York to Kansas.
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Todd started as a laborer with the aerial department at K&W then was moved to the underground department. He soon began running equipment and laboring for a backhoe crew downtown and quickly was promoted to a foreman due to his strong work ethic and leadership skills. Perhaps due to Todd’s inquisitive nature, he has a willingness to do any task given to him. Todd was soon introduced to directional drilling, he also ran a vac to help with potholing for drills and worked at night doing hot cut overs and learned about fiber splicing. During this time he achieved six accolades from upper management laborer, operator, foreman and employee of the year awards.
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In 2003 Todd was promoted to supervisor at which time K&W only had desktop computer units. It was Todd’s innovative thinking that pushed the company to see the value and increased productivity of using laptop computers. Todd's specialty expanded in 2004 to include flash builds and in 2005 he started working on business connection builds for most of the companies' customers at that time as well as road relocations until 2008 when his role changed again.
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Quite often Todd’s out of the box ideas raised eyebrows but they came to fruition over time. Some examples include in 2008 when K&W started to get more involved with road relocates that required a lot more coordination and planning. Todd played a lead role in K&W becoming the contractor who moves all or the majority of the telecoms for these design builds and road relocate projects. But he wasn’t done expanding the capabilities of K&W. It was Todd who broke K&W into water work in 2016, expanding our base of customers.
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Todd’s innovation went on further to design, develop and patent a line of tools to improve the installation of future path/micro duct conduits.
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Todd has a drive to succeed and accomplish things that have never been done before. Due to his experience and knowledge of so many aspects of the industry, willingness to take on any task and commitment to our customers, company and employees, there is no doubt that Todd is an asset to our K&W team!
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Todd is excited for the opportunity he has to continue to play a key role in the growth and expansion of K&W. It is Todd’s innovative thinking and vision that will help continue to lead K&W on the path to success and we are so thankful to have him on our team!