UniFi CCTV & WiFi Installation - Utilities Engineering Company

Full UniFi deployment across a multi-building utilities engineering site: 28 cameras, 17 access points, 6 comms cabinets, singlemode fibre backbone, and centralised management via a Dream Machine Pro.

A utilities engineering company operating across multiple buildings required a complete overhaul of their network, wireless, and surveillance infrastructure. The site presented a number of practical challenges: buildings spread across a campus with no existing structured cabling between them, inconsistent or absent wireless coverage, and no centralised CCTV system. The brief was to design and deliver a unified platform that would give the client full visibility across their entire site and reliable wireless connectivity in every area - offices, corridors, and outbuildings included.

The solution was designed around the Ubiquiti UniFi platform, which allowed us to bring CCTV, WiFi, and switching under a single management interface. This was the right choice for a site of this scale: centralised management, consistent hardware, and a single support relationship for the entire system.

The physical infrastructure came first. The site had a network of existing underground ducts running between its buildings - originally installed for previous cabling that was long redundant. Rather than dig new routes or run surface trunking, we used these pre-existing ducts as the backbone for the new fibre installation. Each duct run was rodded, a pull tape was fed through, and singlemode fibre was then drawn through to the relevant comms cabinet. Where joints were required to extend runs or branch to additional cabinets, the fibre was fusion spliced - 48 splices in total across the site. Singlemode was the correct choice here: it gave us the reach and bandwidth headroom the site needed, with each of the four remote cabinets connecting back to the central comms room over a 10 gigabit uplink. All six comms cabinets were fitted with UniFi PoE switches, providing both data connectivity and power to every camera and access point across the site without the need for separate power runs.

Twenty-eight UniFi cameras were installed across the site, covering internal and external areas. Interior spaces received dome cameras fitted flush to suspended ceilings for a clean, unobtrusive finish. External cameras were mounted on timber beams and exterior walls, positioned to provide clear coverage of entry points, car parks, and site perimeters. All camera feeds are recorded continuously to two UniFi NVR Pro units installed in the central comms room, providing resilient local storage with no reliance on cloud services or third-party subscriptions.

Seventeen UniFi access points were deployed across the site to deliver full wireless coverage. Placement was surveyed in advance to ensure adequate overlap between cells and consistent signal strength throughout, including in areas with challenging building fabric such as solid stone walls and exposed timber-framed spaces. The access points are managed centrally through a UniFi Dream Machine Pro, which also handles routing, firewall, and network segmentation - keeping the camera network isolated from the corporate WiFi.

The result is a site that now has complete wireless coverage, 28 cameras recording continuously, and a network infrastructure that can be monitored and managed from a single interface. The client has a system that is scalable if they expand, supportable by any engineer familiar with the UniFi platform, and backed by Vortex Technologies for ongoing maintenance.