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Construction Connectivity 101

Case Studies

Both case studies are labeled “Representative deployment” — honest, illustrative composites built from typical field results, not named-client claims. Keep the label visible on the page.
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Case Study 1 — Mid-rise commercial GC: site-wide WiFi in one day, for a tenth of the fiber quote

Representative deployment (illustrative composite of typical mid-rise commercial results)

Situation

A regional general contractor mobilized on a 9-story, 24-month office-over-retail project on a previously undeveloped downtown-adjacent parcel. No fiber facilities within reach of the site. On day one the project needed: a four-trailer office complex running Procore and Autodesk Construction Cloud, VoIP for the PM team, 10 security cameras plus a time-lapse unit, badge access at two gates, and usable WiFi for a crew that would peak near 150.

Old-way cost

  • Carrier fiber construction quote: $42,000, lead time quoted at 110 days (arriving after structural steel topping-out was scheduled).
  • Interim plan on prior jobs: crew hotspots and per-camera SIMs — historically ~$1,600/month ($38k over a comparable job) with recurring “camera offline” truck rolls.
  • Exposure: general conditions on this job ran ~$18k/day; any connectivity-driven slip in RFI/submittal flow was direct schedule risk.

Solution

West Networks shipped a pre-configured Site-Wide WiFi Kit:

  • Backhaul: Peplink MAX HD2 bonding two 5G carriers simultaneously via SpeedFusion, mast-mounted on the lead trailer.
  • Distribution: 8× AP One Enterprise — four across the trailer complex, two in IP-rated enclosures covering laydown yard and gates, two staged for the vertical “hoist run” as the structure rose (relocated upward every ~3 floors).
  • SIM pooling: SIM Injector for remote plan swaps.
  • Four VLANs (office / crew / cameras+IoT / guest); cameras and time-lapse moved off individual SIMs onto the camera VLAN.
  • Fleet management via InControl, monitored by West Networks.

Results

  • Deploy time: 1 day. Superintendent connected power; site fully online the afternoon the trailers were set — 109 days ahead of the fiber quote’s lead time.
  • Bandwidth: 340 Mbps aggregate typical (dual-carrier bond, metro coverage); full BIM model pulls in under 10 minutes.
  • Cost: $10,400 hardware one-time + $520/month pooled data vs. $42,000 abandoned fiber — $31,600 avoided upfront, plus ~$1,100/month saved vs. the hotspot/SIM sprawl baseline (~$26k over the job).
  • Uptime: 99.98% measured over 24 months; two single-carrier outage events passed unnoticed thanks to hot-failover — zero dead trailer days on a job burning $18k/day in general conditions.
  • Camera truck rolls: from ~2/month on prior jobs to zero connectivity-caused rolls.
  • Reuse: at handover the kit was unbolted in one afternoon and mobilized to the GC’s next project, re-tagged in InControl the same week. Effective hardware cost across its first two jobs: $5,200 per site and falling.

Case Study 2 — Highway infrastructure mega-site: four carriers + Starlink where nothing worked alone

Representative deployment (illustrative composite of typical heavy-civil / infrastructure results)

Situation

A heavy-civil joint venture began a 30-month highway interchange and bridge program spanning ~3 miles of rural right-of-way: a main compound (six trailers, batch plant), two remote laydown yards, 22 cameras across critical structures, concrete maturity sensors on every major pour, equipment telematics on 40+ machines, weekly drone photogrammetry (3–6 GB per flight), and a peak crew above 250. No carrier delivered more than 8 Mbps anywhere on the alignment. The nearest fiber was 4.5 miles away.

Old-way cost

  • Rural fiber construction estimate: $96,000 with a 5–6 month lead — and it would only reach the main compound, not the remote yards.
  • Status-quo fallback from the JV’s previous rural program: hotspots that barely worked, drone data driven to town on hard drives, camera coverage written off as “best effort.” Estimated productivity drag plus data-sneakernet labor: $3k–$5k/month, unquantified schedule risk on a program with $35k/day general conditions.

Solution

West Networks deployed a Mega-Site Kit:

  • Backhaul: Peplink MAX HD4 bonding four SIMs across three carriers, with two Starlink terminals added into the SpeedFusion bond as additional WAN paths — satellite carrying the load where cellular was thinnest.
  • Distribution: 16× AP One Enterprise — main compound and batch plant, plus point-to-point links extending coverage to both remote laydown yards; a MAX BR1 Pro 5G serving the far yard as a satellite-fed spur node.
  • SIM Injector pooling all cellular plans; VLANs for office / crew / cameras+sensors / telematics; the whole fleet in InControl.

Results

  • Deploy time: 3 days for the full 3-mile footprint — versus a 5–6 month fiber lead that would have covered one compound.
  • Bandwidth: 165 Mbps aggregate where no single path exceeded 8 Mbps cellular / 90 Mbps satellite; WAN smoothing kept VoIP and camera streams stable through weather-driven Starlink dips and daily tower congestion.
  • Cost: $27,800 hardware one-time + $1,150/month data (cellular pool + 2 Starlink plans) vs. $96,000 avoided fiber construction — and the remote yards got covered, which fiber never would have done.
  • Drone workflow: 3–6 GB photogrammetry sets uploaded from the field in under 15 minutes; the hard-drive shuttle ended in week one.
  • Uptime: 99.95% across 30 months, including two regional cellular outages fully absorbed by the satellite paths — zero connectivity-caused schedule slip against $35k/day general conditions.
  • Sensors: 100% of concrete maturity data delivered live; two pours re-sequenced early on real-time strength data, each avoiding an estimated 1-day crew standby.
  • Reuse: kit redeployed to the JV’s next program; the HD4 + Starlink architecture became the JV’s standard mobilization spec. Amortized across a decade of programs, connectivity capex rounds to noise.

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