A government UCaaS migration case study: how independent telecom project management helped a municipal IT team navigate a complex hosted phone system deployment, hit every deadline, and move into a new City Hall with staff already trained and confident on their new phones.
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Quick Answer The City of Bowling Green needed to migrate all city buildings and departments to a UCaaS hosted phone system in time for a new City Hall opening — with limited internal telecom expertise and less than six months on the clock. BAZ Group provided independent UCaaS project management: building the service inventory, guiding critical vendor decisions, redesigning call flows, managing the phone number porting and disconnection strategy, and overseeing the final cutover. The project was completed ahead of schedule, with all staff trained on the new system before move-in day. Staff packed up their phones, plugged them into new desks, and kept working. |
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Ahead Delivered ahead of schedule |
< 6 Mo. Full city-wide UCaaS deployment |
0 Service disruptions at cutover |
Bowling Green is a mid-sized college town in northwest Ohio, home to Bowling Green State University and a full municipal government responsible for delivering public services across City Hall and numerous other city facilities and departments. Like many small-to-mid-sized municipal governments, the City’s IT function is capable and well-managed — but staffed to handle day-to-day operations, not to serve as in-house experts on complex telecommunications migrations.
When a once-in-a-generation infrastructure project — the construction of a new City Hall building — created the opportunity and the deadline for a long-overdue communications technology upgrade, the City needed external expertise to navigate the transition successfully.
The incoming IT Director, Chris Loveless, identified the City Hall move as the right moment to replace the city’s legacy telephony infrastructure with a modern hosted phone system — UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service). The vision was right: UCaaS would replace not just phones at City Hall, but the telephony infrastructure across all city buildings and departments, unifying communications on a single modern platform.
The challenge was execution. The City had limited internal knowledge of its existing telecom environment — no accurate inventory of current voice and data services, no clear picture of what was in use versus what was simply billing, and no in-house expertise in UCaaS migrations. With less than six months from vendor selection to the City Hall move-in date, there was no margin for the kind of delays and missteps that commonly derail government technology projects of this complexity.
What the City needed was not just a UCaaS vendor. It needed an independent project manager with deep telecommunications expertise — someone who understood both the technical requirements of a hosted phone migration and the organizational realities of a municipal government navigating a major technology change. That’s why IT Director Loveless selected BAZ Group after evaluating outside consultants.
Without a clear inventory of existing services, no UCaaS vendor can design a migration that works. BAZ built that foundation first — then guided every decision that depended on it.
BAZ Group’s engagement covered every phase of the UCaaS migration — from building the foundational service inventory through post-cutover billing verification. The engagement is a model for what independent telecom project management looks like in a government UCaaS deployment.
Before any UCaaS design work could begin, BAZ built an accurate inventory of every billable voice and data service the City was currently running. This step — which most organizations skip or underinvest in — is the foundation that every subsequent migration decision depends on. You cannot design a new phone system without knowing exactly what the existing one consists of, which lines are actively used, which numbers need to be ported, and which services can simply be disconnected.
For a municipal government that had never systematically catalogued its telecom environment, this discovery work required dedicated effort. BAZ assembled the inventory concurrently with the City’s UCaaS vendor evaluation — so that when Amplex, the City’s local ISP, was selected as the UCaaS provider, the design process could begin immediately against an accurate baseline rather than losing weeks to catch-up discovery.
A UCaaS migration requires dozens of decisions that most municipal IT teams have never faced before: how to configure auto attendants and call flows for each department, which phone numbers to port to the new system versus leave in place, how to handle analog requirements that don’t fit neatly into a hosted platform (fax lines, elevator phones, door access systems), and how to sequence the cutover to minimize disruption across multiple buildings and departments.
BAZ’s role in this phase was to guide the City and Amplex’s project team through each of these decisions — not just facilitating the conversation, but bringing the technical expertise to help the City understand the implications of each choice before committing. BAZ facilitated the design and rework of call flows and auto attendants, worked with the City to establish the final disposition of every telephone line and number (port, leave as-is, or disconnect), and directed the telephone contractor on site for test-and-tone work to verify physical infrastructure.
With a hard move-in deadline and multiple parties involved — the City’s IT team, Amplex as the UCaaS provider, a telephone contractor for physical work, and the broader City Hall construction timeline — keeping everyone aligned and on schedule was itself a full-time responsibility. BAZ managed the critical path: tracking milestones, keeping all parties accountable to scheduled deadlines, and identifying and resolving blockers before they became delays.
The result of this coordination discipline was not just an on-time delivery — it was an ahead-of-schedule delivery. The UCaaS system was live and fully operational before the move-in date, giving city staff time to train and get comfortable with their new phones while still working in the familiar environment of the old City Hall. On move-in day, staff packed up their phones, plugged them in at their new desks, and kept working.
After the migration was complete, BAZ performed a review of carrier billing post-cutover to verify that all disconnected services had been successfully removed from active billing. This step — often skipped in UCaaS migrations — is where a significant amount of legacy cost typically persists undetected: services that were supposed to be disconnected as part of the migration but remain on the bill because the carrier disconnect was never confirmed. BAZ closed that loop explicitly, ensuring the financial benefit of the migration was fully realized.
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Outcome |
Detail |
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Delivery timeline |
Ahead of schedule — UCaaS system live before the City Hall move-in date |
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Staff readiness |
All city staff trained on new phones while still in old City Hall — zero learning curve on move-in day |
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Move-in experience |
Staff packed up phones, plugged in at new desks, and kept working — no disruption to city operations |
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Service disruption |
Zero — no communication failures across any city building or department during or after cutover |
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Analog requirements |
All non-standard analog services (fax, elevators, access systems) addressed within the migration scope |
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Post-cutover billing |
All disconnected legacy services confirmed removed from carrier billing after cutover |
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Foundation for growth |
Accurate service inventory and modern UCaaS platform positioned the City for future technology transitions |
There’s a useful analogy for what BAZ Group does in a UCaaS migration: the Owner’s Representative in a construction project. When a property owner builds a new facility, they hire an Owner’s Rep to act on their behalf — someone who understands construction deeply enough to hold the contractor accountable, identify problems before they become expensive, and make sure the finished building reflects the owner’s priorities rather than the contractor’s convenience. The Owner’s Rep doesn’t do the construction. They ensure the construction serves the client.
BAZ Group plays the same role in a UCaaS migration. The UCaaS vendor — in this case, Amplex — is capable and motivated to deploy their platform. What they’re less motivated to do is invest significant time helping the client understand the implications of every design decision, flag options that might not be in the vendor’s commercial interest, or take ownership of the dozens of organizational decisions that a successful migration requires. That’s not a criticism of vendors — it’s simply not what they’re paid to do.
An independent telecommunications project manager — one who is not affiliated with any carrier or vendor, and whose only interest is the client’s success — fills that gap. For a municipal IT team navigating a UCaaS migration for the first time, that expertise is the difference between a project that delivers on its promise and one that gets the technology deployed but leaves organizational chaos in its wake.
What BAZ’s independent project management delivered:
UCaaS (Unified Communications as a Service) project management for government organizations covers the planning, coordination, and execution of a hosted phone system migration across municipal or government facilities. It includes building an accurate inventory of existing telecom services, guiding critical design decisions (call flows, number porting, analog requirements), coordinating between the government IT team, the UCaaS vendor, and any physical contractors, managing the project timeline against hard deadlines, and verifying post-cutover billing. For government entities without in-house UCaaS expertise, independent project management is often the difference between an on-time deployment and a costly overrun.
Timeline depends on the scope of the environment — the number of locations, the complexity of existing telecom infrastructure, and the number of analog requirements that need to be addressed within the migration. The City of Bowling Green’s full city-wide UCaaS deployment — covering City Hall and all other city buildings and departments — was completed in under six months from vendor selection to cutover, and was delivered ahead of the target move-in date. With experienced independent project management keeping the critical path on track, government UCaaS migrations can move significantly faster than internal teams typically expect.
A municipal UCaaS migration involves: building an accurate inventory of all existing voice and data services across city facilities; selecting a UCaaS provider and designing the new system; making decisions about every phone number (port to new system, leave as-is, or disconnect); designing call flows and auto attendants for each department; addressing analog services that don’t fit the hosted platform (fax machines, elevator phones, door access systems); coordinating physical installation and test-and-tone work; training staff on the new system; executing the cutover; and verifying that all legacy services are removed from carrier billing post-cutover. Each of these steps involves decisions that benefit from independent telecommunications expertise.
Without independent telecom project management, a UCaaS migration client is entirely dependent on the vendor’s project team to manage a process that the vendor has a commercial interest in completing quickly, not necessarily optimally. Critical decisions — call flow design, number porting strategy, analog requirements, training sequencing — may be made based on what’s easiest for the vendor rather than what’s best for the organization. Delays caused by missing information or unmade decisions typically fall on the client to resolve without expert guidance. And post-cutover issues — including legacy services that remain on the bill — often go unaddressed because the vendor’s engagement has formally ended. Independent project management protects against all of these risks.
Disruption-free UCaaS migration requires three things: an accurate inventory of all existing services before design begins, a carefully sequenced cutover plan that accounts for all departments and locations, and sufficient lead time for staff training before go-live. The City of Bowling Green achieved zero service disruption by completing the UCaaS deployment ahead of schedule — which allowed all city staff to train on the new phone system while still working in the old City Hall. On move-in day, phones were already familiar; staff simply plugged them into new desks and kept working.
Yes — the City of Bowling Green engagement is a direct example of BAZ Group providing UCaaS project management for a small-to-mid-sized municipal government. BAZ’s independent model — not affiliated with any carrier, UCaaS provider, or vendor — is particularly well-suited to government organizations where the IT team has the technical competence to manage day-to-day operations but lacks specialist expertise in telecommunications migrations. BAZ brings that expertise as an extension of the client’s team, at the scale the engagement requires.
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Planning a UCaaS Migration or Technology Deployment? BAZ Group provides independent telecommunications project management for UCaaS migrations, network deployments, and communications technology transitions — with service guarantees that mean you only pay if we deliver. |