STAC Safety Leadership Award

Frank Tang

Frank Tang is Senior Engineer at TELUS, where he is responsible for overseeing all towers across Canada. He works closely with regional implementation and operations teams, radio frequency engineering teams, tower supply and installation vendors, tower engineers, and inspectors to ensure that best practices are carried out at every stage of the implementation process, including new builds, band adds, colocations, maintenance inspections, deficiencies, and repairs.

Frank began his career in tower engineering when he was hired to work in Trylon’s engineering department shortly after receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Alberta in 1986. He returned to Trylon in 1995 before starting with Westower in 1997. He joined TELUS’ Alberta Implementation Team in 2004 and later the Radio Access Network (RAN) National Standards & Best Practices (Tower Division) in 2015. He has been a member of the CSA S37 Technical Committee since 2005 and a member of the STAC Steering Committee since 2016.

In 2006, Frank engineered a solution to protect the anchor shafts on TELUS’ towers from galvanic corrosion by encasing the steel anchor shafts inside a high-density polyethylene pipe filled with concrete. This approach helped protect hundreds of towers from corrosion at a time when below-grade corrosion was not yet considered a hazardous concern in the Canadian tower industry.

Frank is also a keen leader within TELUS’ health and safety and engineering departments. A colleague of his recently told STAC staff that Frank “has been instrumental in training myself and my peers on proper tower safety, what to look for with deficiencies and reviewing inspections when we have questions … He taught us about all the various towers in our network and answered all our questions”

Frank’s innovation and leadership have led him to win this year’s STAC Safety Leadership Award. Please help us celebrate his well-deserved honour!

The STAC Safety Leadership Award is provided to an individual in recognition of an act or activity that has helped improve Canadian tower safety outcomes, either immediately or over an extended period of time.