Los Angeles Site Survey: predictive design plus on-site validation

Timeline depends on scope. A single-floor commercial space with complete as-built drawings can be predictively modeled and quoted within two business days. An AP-on-a-Stick field validation for that same floor takes one to two days on-site. Multi-building campus engagements or healthcare facilities requiring voice-grade and RTLS coexistence modeling typically run two to four weeks from floor plan receipt to final deliverable. Every engagement is scoped and quoted as a fixed-fee SOW before work begins — the timeline, scope, and deliverables are defined in writing. We do not bill hourly against an open-ended estimate.

A predictive survey uses Ekahau Connect to model RF propagation through a calibrated floor plan. No physical measurement occurs — the software simulates signal paths through assigned wall materials and produces coverage heatmaps and an AP placement plan. It is fast and accurate for standard construction materials. An AP-on-a-Stick survey mounts a production-model AP on a telescopic pole at the intended deployment height, and the Ekahau Sidekick 2 captures real measurements — actual RSSI, SNR, and noise floor — as the surveyor walks the floor. For buildings with atypical attenuation (seismic shear walls, lead-lined suites, steel racking, CMU block) or where as-built drawings are unreliable, the AP-on-a-Stick pass is required before procurement. Most WFHS engagements include both: predictive for initial design and AP count, AP-on-a-Stick for validation before the BOM is finalized.

All of Los Angeles County — no mileage charge within the county. That includes DTLA, Hollywood, the Westside (Santa Monica, Century City, Culver City), East LA, San Pedro, Long Beach, Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, Northridge, and the full San Fernando Valley. We also dispatch into adjacent service areas — the Inland Empire, Orange County, Ventura County, and south toward San Diego — under the same fixed-fee SOW structure. Port of LA and Port of Long Beach engagements are quoted separately given port-access credentialing requirements and specialized field conditions.

Every engagement is priced as a fixed-fee SOW — we do not bill hourly. Scope variables that drive cost: building square footage, number of floors, number of buildings, construction type (standard drywall vs. concrete / CMU / atypical materials), required survey type (predictive only, AP-on-a-Stick, or combined predictive-plus-validation), and whether post-install validation and a formal validation report are in scope. We return a written SOW quote within two business days of receiving floor plans and a scope description. Send floor plans to sales@wifihotshots.com or call (844) 946-8746. No engagement begins without the client signing off on the fixed-fee price first.

Every engagement produces: the Ekahau project file (.esx) for future re-use; annotated heatmap exports per frequency band (2.4, 5, 6 GHz) per floor showing RSSI, SNR, secondary coverage (802.11k), and co-channel interference; a vendor-agnostic AP bill of materials with mount type, antenna, PoE class, and cabling callouts; an installation runbook for the contractor; and a post-install validation report with passive heatmap confirmation, iPerf3 throughput results, 802.11r handoff timing, and MOS trace data for voice-grade engagements. The deliverable set is the same regardless of the AP vendor — Cisco, Meraki, Aruba, Juniper Mist, Ruckus, or Extreme. The documentation belongs to the client and is formatted for a 10-year shelf life.

Yes. Passive survey requires no network access and causes zero disruption to production traffic — the Ekahau Sidekick 2 listens passively and never associates to any SSID. Active throughput testing and roaming validation require a brief association to a production or test SSID, which does not affect other clients on the network. Full iPerf3 load testing, which generates several hundred Mbps of synthetic traffic to stress the uplink, is scheduled during off-hours or in a maintenance window if the client requests it. We have conducted passive surveys in live healthcare environments, active trading floors, and operating distribution centers without interrupting production operations. The pre-survey coordination document we send before mobilization identifies which test phases, if any, require an off-hours window.

The survey instruments are the same; the design targets differ. LAUSD-scale K-12 environments — and large public university systems like UCLA, USC, CSUN, or Cal State LA — are designed for 1:1 client device density per classroom or lecture hall seat, not the lower density of a corporate open-plan floor. That changes the AP placement interval, the channel width selection (20 MHz standard in high-density zones), and the roaming design. LAUSD survey engagements are typically scheduled during summer recess to allow room-by-room passive walkthroughs. E-rate procurement requirements mean the deliverable set must include documentation compatible with the district’s Category 2 equipment and installation submission. For higher education, ADA-accessible AP mounting locations and outdoor coverage for hillside campuses — LMU in Westchester, Pepperdine in Malibu, and UCLA’s Westwood terrain — add a field-validation requirement that a flat-floor predictive model cannot resolve.

The fixed-fee SOW covers the defined scope. If the survey uncovers something outside that scope — an ERRCS gap requiring a licensed BDA integrator, a structured cabling deficiency that needs remediation before APs can be installed, or a DAS antenna placement conflict — we document the finding in the validation report with a clear description of the issue and its location. We then issue a separate change-order estimate for any additional WFHS scope and, where the finding is outside wireless engineering (like ERRCS installation), we refer to the appropriate licensed contractor. The client is never billed above the SOW total without a signed change order first. That is the operational definition of a fixed-fee engagement.