COMPANY SNAPSHOT:
Big-D Construction
FOUNDED:
1967
LOCATION:
National
Benefits
The Challenge
Too much ground, too far away
Big-D Construction Midwest has built its reputation on ground-up multifamily housing. When longtime client Real Estate Equities expanded from the Twin Cities into Phoenix, Big-D followed — and Kris Lynn, Business Development Director for Big-D Midwest, took on project director duties for the Arizona work. The project: Tecoma Square, a 252-unit affordable housing development, 13 acres, three residential buildings and a clubhouse. Lynn and Eric Omdahl, owner's representative for Real Estate Equities, were managing all of it from St. Paul and Atlanta, respectively.
That distance created two problems. The first was security: an active construction site with significant material exposure and no permanent overnight presence. The second was visibility. Neither Lynn nor Omdahl could verify what was actually happening on the ground without flying in or taking someone's word for it.
For Omdahl, the challenge wasn't unique to San Tan Valley. Real Estate Equities builds and holds affordable housing long-term, and managing construction from across the country is a structural reality — not a one-time exception. He needed something that could scale with a growing portfolio.
The Solution
Built to survive the desert
At any given time, between $3 and $5 million in materials sits staged and waiting to be installed. Tens of millions more are already in place — framed walls, rough mechanicals, partially finished units with no deadbolts on the doors yet.
Big-D deployed Sapphire PTZ cameras for live viewing and security coverage, positioned to cover perimeter ingress and egress points as well as key areas of the site. The configuration satisfied the project's Builder's Risk insurance requirements while giving Lynn, Omdahl, and the on-site team a shared view from anywhere.
The setup hit something Omdahl had been watching the market for. Builders' risk insurers are requiring more camera coverage on active construction projects, and most available solutions handled security or owner visibility — not both. OxBlue covered the perimeter requirements and gave the owner a real working dashboard: live feeds, time-lapse, multiple angles, multiple sites in one place.
The Implementation
Seeing the same thing at the same time
On a prior Arizona project, Big-D had tried a different camera vendor. The hardware failed in the desert heat and dust, and the vendor's response was worse than the failure itself. "We had a lot of equipment on my site," Lynn said, "but none of it actually worked." For San Tan Valley, that wasn't acceptable — and their Builder's Risk insurance carrier required camera coverage as a condition of the policy. They needed a solution that would hold up and a vendor that would show up when it didn't.
Big-D deployed Sapphire PTZ cameras positioned to cover perimeter entry and exit points, with live viewing capability across the full site. The configuration satisfied their Builder's Risk insurance requirements and gave Lynn, Omdahl and the on-site team a shared view of the project at any hour — not just during the workday.
The cameras proved their worth at a site when someone entered the property via a dry wash after hours. Millions of dollars worth of materials and equipment was at risk. But the motion sensor triggered, the alert was verified by a certified agent who called local police dispatch directly, and officers arrived before the trespassers could get away with anything.
The Results
A template for what comes next
What started as a solution to a single-project problem has expanded into how Big-D approaches camera coverage across its portfolio. For Lynn, the choice keeps coming back to two things: the hardware holds up, and the support shows up. After working with a vendor whose cameras failed in the Arizona heat and whose response was silence, the contrast is concrete. For Real Estate Equities, the case for continuing is built on two things: the platform keeps improving, and the dedicated service.
OxBlue is now active across many of the company's projects. For a team managing millions in exposed materials across sites they can't physically be on, the reliability and quality of OxBlue matters the most.
