Services — schematic design and bill of materials
CCTV System Design: Layout Plans and Bills of Materials for Commercial Buildings
A design starts with the building, not the camera. Send us the building type, the floor count, your plans or a marked-up sketch of the positions, the retention target and the resolution tier you want, and we return a five-link bill of materials with the arithmetic visible: cameras by form and position, PoE ports and watts, recorder channels and drive capacity, CAT6 metres, and a price line by line. The design is a document you can put in front of a client, a main contractor or a lender — and it is yours to keep.
- Building inputs in, a five-link bill of materials out
- PoE watts, recorder channels, drive bays and CAT6 metres all shown as arithmetic
- Priced by line, with the scope and the exclusions marked
- Two revision rounds included before you commit to anything
What you get
The output first, the process after. Every item maps to a line on the quotation.
- 01 Camera schedule Form per position — bullet (FC5B), dome (FC5D) or PTZ (FC5P-PTZ) — with resolution, housing, mounting height and quantity per floor, so positions on the plan can be checked against cameras on the schedule.
- 02 PoE and cabinet schedule Switch model per cabinet, ports used and spare, the watt allowance per position, and the total against that model’s budget — 120 W on the 8-port, 250 W on the 16-port, 320 W on the 24-port.
- 03 Cable schedule with metres Metres per drop, the average and the longest run, boxes of cable, and every run that needs a cabinet or an Extend-mode port against the 100 m limit.
- 04 Recording and storage calculation Channel count with headroom, recorder model, drive bays, capacity, and the arithmetic from GB per channel per day through to terabytes and retention days.
- 05 Display schedule A 4K monitor on the recorder output for one operator, desk clients, or decoder cards in the 14-slot chassis with the camera-to-split mapping worked out.
- 06 Priced bill of materials The same order as the document, with every line priced by tier — currency, tier and what is inside or outside scope confirmed on the formal quotation.
What we need from you
| What you send | What it decides | The form that works |
|---|---|---|
| Building type and use — office, warehouse, hotel, school, hospital, car park | Which camera forms belong at which positions, and where the coverage clusters | One line of text, plus the areas that must be covered and any that must not be |
| Floor count, floor plans, riser and weak-current room locations | How many cabinets the building needs, the port count in each, and the total CAT6 metres | A plan file, a scan, or a photo of a marked-up print |
| Camera positions marked per floor | The camera count, and therefore the channel count, the port count and most of the cost | A dot per position on the plan, or a room-by-room list |
| Retention target in days | Drive bays and total capacity, which is the second largest line on most quotes | One number: 30, 60 or 90 days, and whether any group of channels needs longer |
| Resolution tier — 5 MP on every channel, or 5 MP on critical positions and 2–4 MP elsewhere | Bitrate, storage, and how much of the camera budget goes to detail rather than coverage | A rule rather than a table: “5 MP at gates, tills and stores; the rest at 4 MP” |
| Display layer — how many operators watch, and whether they need a wall | Monitor, client or decoder cards, and the split layout each card has to produce | A sentence about the guard room or control room and how many people sit in it |
More detail
A design is only as good as the inputs. Six of them decide almost every number in the bill of materials, and five of the six you already have: the building, the plans, the positions, the retention target and the resolution tier. The sixth, the display layer, is a decision about how many people watch at once rather than a technical requirement.
Send what you have in any format. A PDF plan, a phone photo of a printed drawing, a hand sketch, or a room-by-room list all work. Where a dimension is unknown we will state the assumption on the drawing, so that whoever walks the site can confirm or correct it before the cable is bought.
Two numbers matter more than the rest: the position count and the retention days. Most sizing errors we are asked to correct come from one of those two being assumed rather than decided.
What comes back: the five links, priced
| Link | In the design document | The figure you should be able to check |
|---|---|---|
| Camera | Form per position — bullet (FC5B), dome (FC5D) or PTZ (FC5P-PTZ) — with resolution, housing, mounting height and quantity per floor | Positions on the plan against cameras on the schedule, and whether every outdoor or reachable position has the housing written in |
| PoE switching | Switch model per cabinet, ports used, spare ports, the watt allowance per position, and the total against that model’s budget | Watts against the switch budget — 120 W on the 8-port, 250 W on the 16-port, 320 W on the 24-port — with headroom left |
| CAT6 cabling | Metres per drop, the average and the longest run, boxes of cable, and every run that needs a cabinet or an Extend-mode port | The longest run against the 100 m limit, and the count of runs that exceed it |
| Recording | Channel count with headroom, recorder model, drive bays, capacity and the storage arithmetic from GB per channel per day to terabytes | Channels against cameras, and terabytes against retention days |
| Display and client | A 4K monitor on the recorder output for one operator, desk clients, or decoder cards in the 14-slot chassis with the camera-to-split mapping | How many feeds the operator actually needs on screen at once, and whether the decoder cards deliver that number of splits |
More detail
The design document follows the chain the system is built in, so that nothing can be left out between the camera and the screen. Each link carries the figure it produced, and each figure can be checked against the arithmetic rather than accepted on trust.
The price sheet uses the same order. Every line item is priced at tier level — the formal quotation confirms the currency, the tier and what is inside or outside the scope — and the accessories that decide whether an installation finishes on time, such as housings, mounts, patch leads, glands and service loops, are on their own lines rather than folded into a camera price.
The recorder outputs HDMI at up to 4K 3840 × 2160 with 1/2/4/6/8/9/10/16 split layouts, which covers most single-operator rooms without a wall. The 14-slot platform chassis with 4K@60 Hz decoder cards (2 HDMI 2.0 outputs and up to 36 splits per card) is specified only where more than one operator, or a permanently displayed group of cameras, justifies it.
The sizing rules we design to
These are the rules the design follows. They are published so that you can audit the document you receive, and so that a second opinion is a conversation about assumptions rather than an argument about numbers.
- Channels = cameras + 15–20% headroom. Fourteen positions points at a 16-channel recorder; eighteen points at 32. A recorder running at 100% of its channel count has no room for the entrance nobody covered, and adding one then means a new box and a second commissioning visit.
- Storage = GB per channel per day × channels × days ÷ 1024. At 5 MP on H.265+ a channel produces roughly 8–15 GB per day, so 16 channels for 30 days is about 3.8–7 TB and 32 channels is about 7.5–14 TB.
- Drives: the 10- and 16-channel recorders take one drive up to 14 TB; the 32-, 49- and 64-channel chassis take up to 18 TB per drive in 2, 4 and 8 bays. Above the limit, retention becomes a question of bays, not of compression.
- PoE = ports for cameras plus spares, and watts checked against the model budget with a 1.25 headroom factor. A 16-port PS162 with a 250 W budget leaves about 200 W for cameras after headroom.
- One run, 100 m. Every position beyond that distance gets a cabinet, a satellite switch fed over an SFP uplink, or an Extend-mode port at 250 m and 10 Mbps with port isolation — the last of which suits a gatehouse or a single perimeter pole, not a camera that goes into a multi-view wall.
- One cabinet every six to eight floors in a tower. The riser decides the port count per cabinet, and each cabinet carries its own wattage budget.
- Recorder access bandwidth is 64 Mbps, which covers a full complement of 5 MP channels at typical H.265+ bitrates — but it is a ceiling worth knowing about before channels are added later.
- CAT6 metres = average run length × positions × 1.15 for waste and routing. Add a 2–3 m service loop at every camera end.
How the design round works
You send the inputs, we confirm what is missing, and we agree a return date when the input list is complete — we would rather give you a date we can hold than a habit. The first issue of the design comes back as a document with the assumptions written on it, not hidden in it.
More detail
Two revision rounds are included. A revision is a change to an input: a position added or moved, a retention target extended, a resolution tier changed, a cabinet relocated. A revision is not a new building, a new floor count or a different scope of supply — those are new designs, and we will say so and quote them as such rather than absorb them silently into the same document.
The design is yours. If you take it to another supplier, we will not pretend to be surprised; all we ask in return is that they are compared with us on the same line items.
Where we decline the design job
A design service that accepts everything produces documents nobody should build from. These are the cases where we will say no, and why:
- Hazardous or classified areas that require a certification our range does not hold. No price advantage compensates for a document you cannot produce.
- Tenders that require an on-site survey by our staff, a stamped drawing by a locally registered engineer, or a design licence we do not hold. We work remotely and we will supply the inputs your local engineer needs to stamp the drawing.
- Projects that need a guaranteed outcome — for example identification at a stated distance — without the mounting heights, light conditions and fields of view to support the claim. We will design to what the site can actually deliver and write the limitation down.
- Requests to design around a device list we cannot document. We design around our own range plus your existing equipment over ONVIF, RTSP or GB28181.
- Enquiries that will only be judged on a total, with no position count and no retention target. We will ask twice; if the inputs stay unknown, we would rather decline than guess with your budget.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a CCTV system design cost?
Nothing, when it accompanies a quotation request — the design is how we quote, not a separate product. We would rather spend the time on the arithmetic than send a price for a building we have not counted. The document is yours to keep and to use: if you take it to another supplier, we only ask that they are compared with us on the same line items, because a comparison of totals between two different scopes is not a comparison. Where a project needs work beyond a design — repeated re-designs for moving scope, tender documentation with drawn schedules, or drawings your local engineer will stamp — tell us and we will agree the scope in writing first.
What exactly do you need from us to start?
Six inputs, and five of them are usually already on your desk: the building type and use, the floor count with plans or a sketch, the camera positions marked per floor, the retention target in days, the resolution tier, and a sentence about how many people watch the screens. Anything you cannot answer we will put on the assumption list and mark on the drawing so it is confirmed before cable is bought. If there is no plan at all, a photo set or a walk-through video of the site is enough to produce a first pass, with the positions we could not verify clearly marked as provisional.
How long does the design take?
We confirm a return date when the input list is complete, and we hold it. In practice most of the elapsed time sits on the input side rather than the design side: the arithmetic takes far less time than waiting for a decision on retention days or on which positions are in scope. If you send everything on a Monday and the position count and retention target are already decided, the document comes back quickly; if the scope is still moving, the drawing will move with it. Tell us your deadline and we will tell you honestly whether the inputs support it.
Can you design around cameras and recorders we already own?
Yes, and it is usually the cheaper route. Cameras that publish a standard ONVIF, RTSP or GB28181 stream can register on a recorder we supply, so an existing camera estate can often be kept while recording, storage and remote access are replaced. Send the model list and, where you have it, the current resolution and bitrate per channel. We will mark in the design what carries over unchanged, what carries over with a check — motion detection and event triggers are the usual ones — and what genuinely has to be replaced. We will also tell you when the honest answer is to keep what you have.
Do you produce drawings that carry a local engineer’s stamp?
No. Many markets require building or electrical drawings to be stamped by an engineer registered locally, and that is a legal role we cannot fill from another country. What we provide is everything that stamp needs: the camera and cable schedules, the cabinet and PoE layout, the topology with run lengths, the recorder and storage calculation, and the specification of each device. Your local engineer takes that package and produces the stamped set for the permit; we stay available to answer questions from them during the process. Building the design so that a local engineer can adopt it quickly is part of how we work.
Plan Your CCTV or Video Wall Project
Send us the building type, floor count and camera estimate — we will come back with a system layout, a bill of materials and a price.