Site surveys, installation and PMO: where most programmes lose the plot.Most RTLS and RFID projects go wrong at installation.

Hardware is the line item every procurement team budgets against. Installation is where the project actually lives. The split is consistent across technologies:

Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

cabling, RF-tuned shielding, dock-door geometry, conveyor integration). Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

beam-steering calibration). Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

multi-antenna alignment, multipath-aware geometry). Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

backhaul, lightning protection, line-of-sight survey). Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey. Multi-site rollouts compound it linearly. Hardware is rarely the deciding cost; install is.

Three structural forces push every supplier's reference design toward more devices than the site actually needs, and the pattern repeats across UWB, BLE-AoA, Passive RFID and LoRaWAN:

1. Accuracy / coverage buffer. When the supplier commits to an accuracy or read-rate figure, their RF engineer adds device headroom so the SLA holds in degraded conditions. That headroom is your install bill.

2. SLA lock-in. Over-density makes the accuracy commitment unfalsifiable. If you ever miss the KPI, the supplier adds ‘a few more anchors’, at full hardware-plus-install price. The original design protected their contract, not your budget.

3. Hardware revenue. Most RTLS / RFID suppliers are silicon-and-hardware businesses. Every extra anchor, reader, Locator or gateway pays the account manager who scoped it. Reference designs trend dense for a reason that's nothing to do with physics.

Typical over-design examples: 5,000 m² automotive WIP deployments designed for 80 UWB anchors when 40 met the KPI under production load; 18 dock-door Passive RFID portals on a 12-dock site; BLE-AoA hospitals scoped at 1 Locator per 50 m² when 1 per 90 m² would have hit clinical workflow accuracy.

Half the project budget: gone to RF buffer that did nothing the day after commissioning.

Different projects need different levels of TRACIO involvement. Three engagement models, all of them independent, all of them tied to your accuracy KPI rather than to supplier hardware revenue:

A · PMO ownership: we manage the chosen supplier and contracted installer. You buy hardware direct from the chosen supplier on your terms.

We take PMO ownership of the deployment, coordinating between the supplier's RF engineering team, the contracted installer, your IT/OT and operations teams, and the integration partner.

Our job is to keep all four aligned to your KPI and acceptance test, not to the supplier SLA, which is usually weaker. Best when you already have a preferred installer or framework agreement, or where supplier SLA is conditional on their installer doing the work.

B · Independent physical install: we do the cabling and hardware mounting. When the supplier's preferred installer can't be trusted on the KPI commitment,

or you want a clean separation between hardware supply and install responsibility, we do the cabling and fit the hardware ourselves, for example RFID readers, UWB sensors and GPS tags, which you buy direct from your chosen supplier (we don't sell hardware). Your IT team provisions any connection to your network.

CAT6A / fibre cabling, ceiling penetration and tray work, anchor / reader / Locator / gateway mounting at design-verified heights and orientations, synchronisation calibration, multi-time-of-day commissioning under production load.

We don't sell hardware or take commissions from vendors.

C · Supplier-design liaison: we engage the hardware supplier on critical mounting and density. Where you've already committed to supplier + installer but want independent validation of the design before signing,

we work directly with the supplier's RF engineering team on the critical mounting requirements: anchor heights, antenna orientation, RF-blocker mitigation, multipath-tolerant geometry, ceiling-grid alignment, anchor synchronisation strategy.

The output is a design that's been pressure-tested against the as-built environment before installer mobilisation, so the contractor delivers to a target that actually works rather than to a reference design that doesn't survive the live site.

Most general-purpose AV / network contractors are competent at PoE drops and ceiling mounts. They are not RF engineers, and RTLS / RFID accuracy is an RF problem.

Five failure modes account for the majority of post-install accuracy regressions we get called in to fix, and they apply across UWB, BLE-AoA, Passive RFID and LoRaWAN:

1. Anchor / Locator / reader height drift. A UWB anchor designed for 4.2 m mounted at 3.8 m changes the cone of coverage noticeably.

A BLE-AoA Locator at the wrong height destroys angle accuracy. A Passive RFID portal antenna 200 mm off design height misses tags. The RF model breaks silently.

2. RF blockers introduced post-survey. Site survey ran on an empty bay. By go-live the bay has racking, machine guarding, conveyor cages, mezzanines or temporary tooling that the survey never accounted for.

Multipath and shadowing patterns change. The contractor signs off at commissioning. The system fails six weeks later.

3. Multipath / reflection from metal and glass. Metal racking, glass partitions, stainless hygiene panels (pharma, food), ceiling HVAC ducting and concrete-aggregate floors create UWB and BLE-AoA multipath, Passive RFID nulls, and LoRaWAN shadowing.

Device placement must compensate via geometric offset, not just count. Most contractors install on the ceiling grid: fast, RF-disastrous.

4. Line-of-sight gaps over the production day. A site survey at 09:00 doesn't see the 11:30 shift change when a 12-tonne press cycle blocks four anchor sightlines, or a dock-door overhead door cycle interrupts Passive RFID reads, or a forklift mast occludes a BLE-AoA Locator.

We run multi-time-of-day survey passes. Most installers run one.

5. Synchronisation and back-end timing. TDoA UWB requires nanosecond synchronisation across anchors. BLE-AoA Locators need precise time-alignment. Passive RFID readers need consistent power-cycle timing.

LoRaWAN gateways need GPS-disciplined clocks. A subtly mis-cabled PoE switch with hop-count latency variance will quietly destroy positioning accuracy without ever logging a network error.

Whichever engagement model fits, the scope covers the full RF infrastructure for the project, not just the visible hardware, plus the network requirements your IT team needs:

• Predictive RF site survey calibrated against the as-built environment: racking, machinery, glass, HVAC, ceiling height variation, floor materials.
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Anchor / reader / Locator / gateway placement at design-verified heights with multipath-aware geometric offset across UWB, RAIN, BLE-AoA, LoRaWAN, Wi-Fi RTLS and active RFID.
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PoE and VLAN requirements: we specify them for your IT team, including VLAN segmentation per IEC 62443, TDoA / sync timing tolerance and a dedicated RTLS traffic class. Your IT team configures and connects the network.
• Cabling and physical install: CAT6A, fibre, cable trays, conduit, ceiling penetration, lightning protection for rooftop gateways.
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Synchronisation calibration: TDoA nanosecond sync, BLE-AoA time-alignment, RAIN power tuning, LoRaWAN GPS lock.
• Multi-time-of-day commissioning under production load. Accuracy validated against the KPI in the conditions the system will actually run in.
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Acceptance test execution against pre-agreed go / no-go criteria measured in production, not in supplier-demo conditions.
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As-built documentation pack: RF survey data, accuracy validation report, PoE and VLAN requirements, anchor / reader register, photographs, sign-off by operations + IT/OT.
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Handover to operations with named accountability for drift detection and re-calibration. Optional managed service for the RTLS/RFID system afterwards: health checks, accuracy reviews, maintenance planning and supplier oversight, with no network configuration and no operation of your production systems.

• A named sponsor and an operations lead who can sign off acceptance
• Floor plans, ceiling and racking drawings, and the supplier design or quote if you have one
• An IT/OT contact for network, VLAN, PoE and security sign-off
• Site access, inductions and permits, including any hot-work or working-at-height rules
• The accuracy KPI the system must hit, or time with us to define it
• Hardware bought by you, direct from the supplier you choose

Independent on the hardware, experienced across the major platforms:

UWB: Sewio, Ubisense, Pozyx, Litum, Inpixon (Design Reactor), Qorvo silicon, NXP UWB, Apple U1/U2 ecosystem; FiRa Consortium standards.
BLE / BLE-AoA, Quuppa, Aruba (HPE), Cisco Spaces, Juniper Mist;

Bluetooth SIG direction-finding spec.
Passive RFID: mobile, fixed and RTLS-grade, Impinj, Zebra (handhelds, fixed readers, ATR7000 RTLS-grade), Honeywell, Alien, CAEN, RF Controls CISC;

GS1 EPC standards.
LoRaWAN: Actility, The Things Industries, ChirpStack network servers; Kerlink, Multitech, Tektelic, Cisco gateways; LoRa Alliance standards.
Wi-Fi RTLS (Aruba, Cisco DNA Spaces / Catalyst, Juniper Mist BLE-AoA);

IEEE 802.11mc FTM.
GNSS & outdoor: u-blox, Trimble, Semtech LR1110 hybrid; RTK and PPP-RTK correction services.
Active RFID / RTLS-grade alternatives (Identec, CenTrak, Stanley Healthcare AeroScout, Sonitor).

Supplier-design audit: £3k to £30k per project, depending on complexity.

PMO ownership: scoped per project, with a day rate or a project fee tied to deployment milestones. Typical engagements run 3-6 months single-site, 6-18 months multi-site.

We're accountable to the KPI, not to supplier SLA, so the commercial structure ties our fee to your acceptance test, not to a project schedule.

Independent physical install: scoped per project within our £3k to £30k project range, or at £1,200 a day, with no commercial dependency on hardware revenue and with KPI accountability that a typical contractor SOW does not provide.

The defining commercial point: the install bill is where the business case lives. Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

Hardware prices come from supplier quotes in the survey.

Four deployment patterns we see consistently:

UWB at scale in automotive, aerospace MRO and large industrial WIP tracking. Anchor counts run 40-100 per site. Over-spec savings dwarf the audit fee within the first site.

BLE-AoA in hospitals. Supplier designs over-specify Locator density to lock-in clinical workflow accuracy SLAs. A density review against your own accuracy KPI often shows that fewer Locators will meet it.

Passive RFID at retail / warehouse scale. Multipath from racking is the dominant constraint; portal antenna geometry, smart-shelf tuning, and dock-door RF management are routinely mis-specified.

RTLS-grade RFID (ATR7000, RF Controls) on warehouse-scale passive-tag RTLS deployments. Ceiling phased-array placement is unforgiving: most installers have never deployed it before.

Independent install or close PMO control is usually the difference between a working system and an expensive failure.

LoRaWAN private networks across distributed outdoor sites: campus utilities, oil & gas, agriculture. Gateway placement is GPS-line-of-sight critical. Contractors often skip the elevation survey. Few enough gateways that the cost of getting placement wrong is enormous per device.

Where the service is less needed: small UWB deployments under 10 anchors, single-room BLE proximity, or pure RAIN handheld-cycle-count operations. The infrastructure budget is too small to justify the audit overhead.