Completed worker accommodation camp arranged around circulation paths

Planning Checklist · 8 min read

Planning a Worker Camp

Camps fail on the things nobody costed: drainage, water storage, the pad and the sequence containers arrive in. Here is the checklist we work through with buyers.

The modules are the easy part. What decides whether a camp opens on time is a short list of decisions made months earlier, most of which have nothing to do with the buildings.

1. Headcount and Phasing

Construction peak, commissioning and steady-state operation need different bed counts. Size for the phase you are in and plan how the camp extends or reduces, because bolted modules can be added to a row or relocated at the end of a phase.

2. The Pad

Units want a level, drained pad. On the Guinea camps the modules went onto prepared red-earth foundations, and getting that right is most of the install. A pad that is not ready when the containers land is the single most common cause of slow erection.

3. Ground Area Versus Stacking

Earthworks on a remote site are expensive. Stacking two storeys with external steel staircases is usually cheaper than clearing more ground, and it is what we did on both the El Salvador hydropower camp and the Simandou camp in Guinea.

4. Building Mix

Dormitories sized to your occupancy standard
Canteen and kitchen sized by covers per sitting
Ablution and sanitary blocks, or en-suite rooms
Site offices, meeting rooms and document control
Laundry, recreation and any welfare requirement

Building them all from one module family means one bill of materials, one drawing set and one erection sequence — which is what let a 500+ module camp go up to schedule.

5. Water, Drainage and Power

Kitchen and ablution demand together set the camp's water storage and drainage design. Drainage falls and invert levels also decide where the sanitary blocks can physically sit, so they should be set out before the first module lands.

Camp accommodation row with water storage tanks in service — Water storage is sized from the kitchen and ablution demand, not from the bed count alone.

6. Loads and Standards

Wind speed, seismic zone, snow load and the applicable code are needed before engineering starts. For stacked camps the stacking case is calculated separately.

7. Freight Format and Sequencing

Detachable modules ship flat so several fit one 40HQ container, which is where most of the saving on a large camp comes from. On multi-container projects, containers are numbered so the modules needed first arrive first and the crane keeps working.

8. Erection Resources

Crane or lifting plant available on site, confirmed before lifting points are detailed
Crew size and experience with bolted systems
Whether supervised installation is wanted for the first blocks
Who checks the delivery against the bolt and panel schedule on arrival

9. End of Life

Decide early whether the camp is written off or recovered. Bolted modules can be dismantled and moved to the next project — but only if the erection drawings and bolt schedules stayed with the site file.