Jobsite security cameras: power, connection and after-hours alerts

Researchers at East Tennessee State University studied 15,274 theft incidents at construction sites that police agencies reported through the National Incident-Based Reporting System in 2015. Tools were involved in 39.8 percent of them, heavy construction equipment in 12.1 percent and building materials in 11.3 percent. The average loss was about $5,865 per incident, and fewer than 7 percent of stolen items were recovered across all targets. The researchers put the direct loss to the US construction industry at about one billion dollars a year.

They also note that sites are often left unattended when no work is under way, often with only a fence around them. So most of what leaves is small and easy to carry, and little of it comes back. Finding out while the thief is still on site is worth more than a recording you watch on Monday.

Many sites already have cameras. A small system may sit in the trailer or office, left by an earlier contractor or put in by the site manager. If there is a recorder, find out whether it is recording, how many days it holds and whether anyone looks at it. A recorder with nobody watching tells you what you lost on Monday morning.

Our business security cameras guide shows how to check the picture and the recorder before you spend money on new gear. If the site has no cameras, our construction site guide covers where to put them, what to ask a vendor and what drives the cost.

Want to know when someone is on site after hours? Try it free for 7 days, no card

Early in a job there may be no permanent power. Cameras usually get power one of four ways: a temporary site supply, solar panels with a battery, a battery alone, or a camera trailer or tower that brings its own power. The tradeoffs are covered in our construction site guide. Three points matter in practice.

• Make one person responsible for checking that the cameras are on. A camera that lost power on Friday does nothing on Saturday night.
• If a recorder or computer lives in the site trailer, it needs steady power too. A power cut should not leave you with a silent recorder, so put a battery backup on it if you can.
• If your cameras run on one cable that carries both power and video (PoE), remember that one run of network cable is limited to 100 meters (about 328 feet), according to Axis and the switch maker NETGEAR. On a big site that limit decides where the recorder or switch goes.

A camera that only records does not need the internet. A system that tells you something is happening does. With no broadband on site, the usual answer is a cellular router: a small box with a SIM card and a data plan. Put it where the signal is best, often high on a trailer or a pole, and test it at night as well as in the day.

Then ask what actually travels over that connection. Live video from many cameras at once uses a lot of data. A photo of an event uses far less. With our software your recordings stay on site, and we send the photo and short clip of an event. Ask any other vendor what their system sends, how often, and how it behaves when the signal drops.

One camera cannot cover a whole site. Put them where theft has to pass or where the value sits.

• Gates and entrances, where everything and everyone goes in and out.
• Where tools and materials are kept: a locked container, a material yard or a cage.
• Where machines are parked overnight.
• The site office or trailer door.
• Long fence lines and blind corners, once the places above are covered.

If the site's cameras and recorder work, you do not need new cameras to be told about people on site after hours. Here is how it works with ours.

• 1. Find the recorder's brand and model. We work with Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, Hanwha, Uniview, TVT, CP Plus, or any camera or recorder that supports RTSP or ONVIF.
• 2. Pick a Windows computer on site that stays on and shares the recorder's network. It can be a computer in the site trailer. It needs an internet connection.
• 3. Install our software. It takes about 60 seconds, and your recorder keeps recording as usual.
• 4. Pick the cameras that matter and mark zones, such as the gate, the tool container or the machine yard. Set your closed hours once for the site, such as nights and weekends.
• 5. Choose who is told: you, the superintendent, whoever is on call. The alert is a photo with the camera and the time, on WhatsApp, Telegram or the Foreman app, while it is still happening.
• 6. Run the free 7-day trial on up to 32 cameras, no card, and judge it by what it catches on your own site.

Four things are standard on every site: smoke and fire, people after hours in the zones you mark, a covered camera, and a warning when a camera goes offline. The last two matter on a jobsite. If someone covers or turns a camera, or a camera loses power or is unplugged, you hear about it. A second, larger model checks every event before you are alerted, which keeps false alarms down. Our own AI models, trained in-house, run on site, and we never train on your footage.

Some checks are set up for your site with our team, not switched on for everyone: helmet and vest checks, forklift near-miss and idle machines. Tell us what you need to see and we will set it up with you.

An alert is only useful if someone knows what to do with it. Before the first night, decide who is called first, what they do (look at the camera, call the site contact, call the police), and who covers when that person is asleep or off. Ask your local police department what they want to see before they will respond to a site alarm, because that differs from city to city.

We send the alert to you and the people you choose. We do not provide guards, a monitoring center or police dispatch.

A construction camera is often a time-lapse camera. It takes a picture every so often to show how the project is progressing. That is a different job from security. A site can use both. We do not make or sell either kind of camera.