CCTV for construction sites and compounds

How to set up CCTV on a construction compound

Be clear which problem you have. If the job is six weeks of groundworks with no power and no cabin, hire a redeployable tower — that is a different product and we do not supply or install it. If you have a compound, a cabin, mains power and six months or more on site, a fixed kit costs less by the second month and moves to the next job with you.

Four cameras covers the standard compound: the gate, framed for the vehicle, its colour and the driver — a general-purpose camera will not reliably read the plate after dark, because UK plates are retroreflective and a scene illuminator blows them to white; that needs a dedicated ANPR camera. Then the plant park, the material store where cable drums and copper sit, and the cabin door. Eight adds the fuel bowser, the scaffold face, the welfare unit and a second gate.

Site theft happens between one and four in the morning on a site nobody is watching, so passive recording is half a system. Cameras with a PIR, a strobe and an on-board siren interrupt the visit instead of documenting it — the 3K ColorVu PIR siren turret and bullet we hold are built for exactly that — note they are Turbo HD coax cameras (DS-2CE part numbers), so they go on a hybrid DVR rather than an NVR, and the PIR is a short-range trigger of roughly 10-12 m, not a perimeter detector. Aim the trigger zone across your own approach, not at the fence line, or you will alarm on the pavement all night.

Protect the recorder before you protect the cameras. The first thing an experienced thief takes is the DVR, which removes the evidence of the theft along with the kit. Bolt it into a steel lock box inside the cabin, on its own spur, and take the drive out at handover.

Two practicalities. There is usually no broadband, so budget a 4G router if you want the site on your phone; a SIM router beside a hybrid DVR is a ten-minute job. And mount to the hoarding, the cabin or a dedicated post — never to the structure being built, because everything fixed to the frame gets moved three times.

Then there is mud, grit and vibration. IP66 is the jetting rating and IP67 the immersion one — different tests rather than a ladder — so for a wheel wash or a jetting bay ask for a body rated IP66 AND IP67, which most Hikvision and Dahua housings are. Seal every gland and use a proper junction box: a well-specified camera on a wet back box still fails in one winter.

Sources: The ICO's video surveillance guidance · The ICO's CCTV advice for small organisations