Commercial Integrator May 2022 - 32

LEGACY 75th
Anniversary
2017:
2019
Verrex opens its
full-service west coast
office in Los Angeles.
Verrex completes its first
HQ build-out in NYC's
Hudson Yards for a global
financial firm.
2017
2017:
Verrex first named to
Commercial Integrator's
inaugural Fast-Growing
Firms list.
thing that we know and can guarantee is
going to work both today, six months and
two years from now. "
Engineering Prowess
Verrex's engineering prowess is a core component
of the company's success. " We've
got fantastic individuals on the sales end, "
Berry affirms. " But, ultimately, customers
come to us because of our engineering expertise
- whether it's advice on the front-end
design, [our] knowledge of the technology,
the level of documentation that we provide
or just the overall end result of the product. "
Berry states the obvious to stress the importance
of its implications: Verrex isn't a vendor;
it's a technology solutions partner. " We are an
integrator that takes individual components
2019:
Verrex awarded largest
design-build project to date -
over 600,000 square feet -
for the NYC HQ of a leading
global law firm.
and puts them into a working system, " he
explains. " We're puzzle builders. "
During our conversation, Dandola-Grubb
recalls working on a project at a medical
training facility in the U.K. The challenge, he
recounts, was enabling video inputs across
multiple surgical training rooms. At the
time, there was still a mix of analog and digital
video. " Today, [the solution would be]
AV-over-IP, " Dandola-Grubb states. " Back
then, we had five different types of video
in every room. One of the programmers
wrote a module...for Crestron that allowed
each room to select what sources they had
to enable overflow. Every other touchpanel
in the building had buttons dynamically appear
that could accept the route [for] those
video signals once enabled. "
Thomas G. Berry, Sr.
Dandola-Grubb shares the anecdote
because it's an accomplishment that the
engineering team is still proud of to this day
- and it was done in the pre-AV-over-IP era.
Even though a private-equity firm owns
Verrex, it still remains a family-based organization.
An essential part of its corporate
ethos is to put employees first. " Employees
are the company, " Dandola-Grubb declares.
" If you don't have any clients, you don't
have a business. But if you don't have great
employees, you also don't have a business. "
Berry agrees, saying, " It's always been
about the people. Take care of the people,
surround yourself with great people and
there's nothing that you can't do. " Thus, it's
with evident pride that Berry says Verrex has
the most talented people in the industry.
" And by the way, " he continues, " this industry
has got the most talent that I've ever seen
in any comparable industry. " Berry credits
that, at least in part, to love of the technology
itself. " And the fact [that] technology is
constantly evolving, " he adds. " People have
the ability to continue to learn it, so it makes
[the industry] a fun place to work. "
Over its 75-year history, Verrex has matured to
a full-service systems integrator that can tackle
virtually any technology-integration project across
vertical markets. Here, we see the company's
handiwork for Rutgers University.
32
Commercial Integrator MAY 2022
Verrex Values its Employees
When the pandemic began, Verrex made
its employees and their families the top
priority. Berry recalls making sure that the
company could leverage all government
programs, such as PPP loans and employee-retention
credits. " I know Verrex is
not unique in that, " Berry acknowledges.
" There were a lot of companies in our
industry that took advantage of that. " One
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