CCS was contracted by the Port of Houston Police Dept. to install a BATs wireless antenna on top of their 250 foot grain storage facility . This unit will be used to provide network connectivity to the Port’s Mobile Command Center when it is deployed. Going forwards the BATs will be the Port’s Command Center first choice for connectivity followed by LTE services and finally satellite network connectivity.

New BATS omni-directional antenna on the roof of the Port of Houston grain elevator.

The challenge with this project is that the grain elevator was not functional so it could not be used to get the equipment to the roof of the building. This meant most of this gear had to be carried by hand up the stairs to the roof. The only exception to this was the large BATs antenna which was too large to fit through any of the doorways. CCS led by Guy Dawson our Operations Manager had to design a winch based lift system that could lift the antenna to the roof of the building. The only problem with that is that we had to hand carry the winch system up the stairs to the roof. That is when you find out just how bad of shape you are in when you are carrying steel beams up 27 flights of stairs. Luckily myself, Paul Aguero, and John Bell were able to do that without anyone dying! I think we all lost about 10 lbs during these last two days.

Custom winch system designed by CCS.
The flight of stairs we had to manage to get the equipment to the roof!

This BATS system will be able to provide some important network connectivity to the Port as well as any other BATs customers that the Port allows access to in the Harris County area. This unit is rated for 160 mph winds so hopefully it will survive any hurricanes that roll through this season. Really appreciate Colin Rizzo and his team at the Port for the business and their support during the project.