Construction
Site internet, CCTV and attendance that go up in a day and move to the next project when this one closes.
What makes this sector hard
- A site may only exist for a year or two. Nobody wants to pay for permanent fiber, but the site office still needs email and drawings on day one.
- Rebar, cable and diesel disappear at night, and a recorder kept on site is often stolen along with them.
- Hundreds of day workers and subcontractor crews change every week. Paper timesheets and buddy punching inflate payroll.
- The owner, often in Vientiane or abroad, wants to see progress without a site visit.
- Drawing revisions and BIM models run to hundreds of megabytes, and a 4G link chokes when everyone syncs at 8 a.m.
Reference IT design
A construction site is temporary, so we design its IT the same way: a kit that arrives on a truck, runs for the life of the project, and leaves on a truck.
Day one: get the site office online
- A dual-SIM 4G router (5G where there's coverage) on two different carriers, with external antennas on a pole. Signal inside a container office drops sharply, so the antenna always goes outside.
- If a building with fiber is a few kilometres away with clear line of sight, a point-to-point wireless link usually beats 4G on both speed and monthly cost.
- The "site kit" cabinet: small rack, PoE switch, firewall/SD-WAN appliance and UPS, pre-configured in Vientiane so the site team only plugs it in.
- SD-WAN or VPN back to head office for ERP and project files.
Week one: the fence and the gate
- IP CCTV along the fence line, material yard and fuel tanks. Use full-color low-light or IR cameras with a floodlight; most theft happens where it's dark.
- Perimeter security and AI video analytics that push an alarm to the guard's phone after hours, rather than a recording someone reviews the next morning.
- Recordings replicate to head office or the cloud. If thieves take the recorder, the evidence has already left the site.
- Face-based time attendance at the gate, exporting to payroll. Access control on the store and tool room.
While the project runs
- Outdoor Wi-Fi for the site office, containers and worker camp, with separate VLANs for staff, cameras and subcontractors.
- A time-lapse camera on the highest point for the owner's monthly progress report.
- Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace for email, drawing sharing and meetings; a NAS at head office with cloud backup for CAD/BIM files.
- GPS fleet tracking for trucks, excavators and concrete mixers.
- Surge protection on every camera mounted on a tall pole. In the rainy season, tall poles are the first thing lightning finds.
- UPS for network cabinets and recorders, because site power comes from generators.
Closeout
Dismantle, test and relabel the kit, wipe recorders and laptops securely, and ship it to the next site.
Contractors running several sites at once get the most out of this. The same cloud-managed kit everywhere means one IT person in Vientiane can see every site and fix most problems without the drive to the province.
Tell us where your next site is and when it starts. We'll check 4G coverage and wireless link options before you mobilize.
Send us a floor plan or a few photos of the site
We’ll come back with a few questions, then a first design. The first consultation is free, in Lao, Thai or English, on WhatsApp or our Facebook page.