Bern Gallagher is the owner and president of PVI, and promotes an underlying philosophy to act as an extension of PVI customers. PVI supplies the most reliable design and build methods that make sense from both a budget and risk management perspective. PVI utilizes a wide range of experts in the field to make sure we are using all of the best practices recognized in the 7x24 mission critical industry while also crafting new ones to meet specific client needs.
Bern Gallagher has over 30 years of experience in the 7x24 mission critical industry. Bern started his career after graduating from Drexel University with a BS in Electrical Engineering. Bern began work as an electrical engineer specializing in switchgear design in 1988 at Robert E. Lamb (Design Build) where he learned the value of working ‘in the field,’ at various technical construction sites (PEPCo Data Center and Control Room). In 1993 Bern was hired by one of the big firms, Philadelphia’s largest A&E firm, Kling Lindquist (Architecture & Engineering) where he deepened his knowledge of design templates, pharmaceutical standards, financial industry reliability requirements and client relationships.
By 1997 Bern shifted to an owner representative role as he was hired away by one of his clients, Primestar, where he designed their Broadcast control rooms, NOCs, expanded their data centers and increased infrastructure reliability. As Senior Manager and Chief Engineer of infrastructure, Bern was responsible for Primestar’s primary technical facilities (Data Centers, NOC and Uplinks) overseeing all major construction and maintenance until DirecTV purchased the company in 2000. He then moved on to QVC where Bern was QVC’s lead PM building a 10,000 square foot Data Center at their technical headquarters. All electrical maintenances at QVC were also under Bern. Bern also expanded the QVC Data Centers, grew infrastructure and increased reliability at nine US sites (Call Centers, Uplink and Distribution Centers). Uptime at QVC, a chronic problem before Bern’s arrival, became a strength for the organization. Bern, as Director of Broadcast Engineering for QVC, helped the company migrate from Standard Definition to an all new High Definition camera system and Broadcast supported by an all new fiber-optic Broadcast Network designed by PVI’s Rob Giampietro. He also designed and built the QVC Studio Store at the Mall of America. The first of its kind broadcasting daily from the store.
In 2007 after Comcast had a major outage in Denver, Bern was recruited as a long term consultant. As the consultant for Comcast and at PVI, Bern executed major builds and the supporting infrastructure. Highlights included NBC’s primary control room at Dry Creek, mirroring 30 Rock, building seven 4000A or larger switchgear power systems, multiple control rooms, technical labs and Data Centers at several Comcast National and Division sites.
Bern and his PVI team members are often asked to act as a project general contractor, performing design build turnkey solutions. Bern, leaning on his team approach learned at Primestar, QVC and Comcast, helps clients with conceptual design solutions that turn into design build projects. These designs solutions are created using Bern’s experience as a detailed engineer, owner representative and technical build GC. The natural progression to maintain what PVI has designed and built, came easy to Bern due to his extensive experience as an infrastructure representative at Primestar, QVC and Comcast. When Bern is combined with the experience over 70 PVI employees, PVI’s goal of succeeding as an extension of their clients, can be achieved.
