San Fernando Valley site survey — Ekahau predictive, onsite, and validated

Timeline depends on scope. A single-floor commercial space on Ventura Boulevard or in the Burbank media corridor 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 — CSUN-scale higher ed, Providence or Northridge Hospital-scale clinical campuses, or LAUSD Local District Northwest-scale multi-school rollouts — 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. Our 15-minute dispatch from Valencia to Burbank means mobilization is fast, and 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 (plaster-over-metal-lath, concrete-plus-rebar shear walls, sheet-metal hangar shells, steel-truss soundstage envelopes, lead-lined imaging suites, 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 the San Fernando Valley — and the 15-minute Valencia-to-Burbank dispatch is the primary geo-differentiator. Coverage runs the full east-to-west SFV footprint: Burbank, Glendale, Studio City, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, Encino, Tarzana, Reseda, Winnetka, Canoga Park, Woodland Hills, West Hills, Chatsworth, Mission Hills, Granada Hills, Porter Ranch, and Northridge. The SFV/Santa Clarita border (Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia) is inside the same dispatch. We also dispatch into adjacent service areas — LA metro, Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley, Ventura County, Inland Empire, Orange County — under the same fixed-fee SOW structure. Van Nuys Airport and Hollywood Burbank Airport engagements are quoted with airport-access credentialing and Part 161 coordination factored in.

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. CMU block vs. plaster-over-metal-lath vs. concrete-plus-rebar shear wall vs. steel-truss soundstage vs. sheet-metal hangar), 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, HPE 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 Burbank soundstage production environments, clinical patient floors, and operating aerospace hangars without interrupting production operations. Studio production schedules typically drive a pre-survey coordination call with the stage manager to identify access windows that do not conflict with active shoots. 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. CSUN-scale higher education and LAUSD-scale K-12 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 — LAUSD Local District Northwest specifies 2 APs per classroom (a 2:1 AP-to-classroom ratio, not the 1:1 ratio common in other districts), which drives tighter AP-to-AP spacing — the channel width selection (20 MHz standard in high-density zones), and the roaming design. LAUSD Local District Northwest engagements are typically scheduled during summer recess to allow room-by-room passive walkthroughs in CMU-block buildings where hallway-only AP plans fail under classroom load. E-rate procurement requirements mean the deliverable set must include documentation compatible with the district’s Category 2 equipment and installation submission for the FY2026–2030 funding cycle. For CSUN-scale higher education, outdoor coverage across the 356-acre main campus — quads, pathways, and residence halls — requires outdoor-rated APs on 6 GHz standard power with AFC coordination, and ADA-accessible AP mounting locations are a hard constraint. CSUN and LAUSD are referenced here as venue archetypes, not as claimed engagements.

The fixed-fee SOW covers the defined scope. If the survey uncovers something outside that scope — an ERRCS gap requiring a licensed BDA integrator at a Providence or Northridge Hospital campus, a structured cabling deficiency that needs remediation before APs can be installed in a Ventura Boulevard mid-rise, or a DAS antenna placement conflict inside a Burbank soundstage grid-iron — 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.