Construction surplus along the SH-121 corridor.

A large project buys cable in quantities sized to a pull schedule, and the schedule rarely consumes the last reel. What remains at close-out is feeder tails, tray cable left on a partial reel, MC whips cut long, and the odds and ends a contractor would otherwise carry to the next job in the back of a van. That leftover pile, not a demolition, is where most Plano lots begin.

Close-out surplus is the cleanest material in the metro. It has a tag, a construction, a length and usually a project it belonged to, and a buyer can review it from photographs and a short list without visiting the site at all. That is rare enough to be worth protecting while the material is still stacked.

Mission-critical buildings put the interesting cable in a small number of rooms. UPS output feeders, battery and bypass conductor, switchgear to busway connections and the control and monitoring cable that links them are all installed in quantity, and replaced in quantity when a room is upgraded.

Paralleled feeder sets deserve their own note on any list. Sets have to match in length, material, size and insulation, so a leftover set that has lost one run is a different lot from a complete one, and the difference is not visible from the outside.

• Name the room and the equipment the cable connected.
• Say whether a feeder set is complete or missing a run.
• Note whether busway cable is a riser feed or a busway-to-busway tie.
• Keep control and monitoring cable separate from power conductor.

Plano holds both ends of the range. New-build surplus is banded, tagged and often still wrapped, and its review turns on length and construction. A 1990s campus being retrofitted gives the opposite: riser and panel feeder that has carried load for decades, cut at both ends during a strip-out.

Storage decides the middle ground. A reel that stayed indoors under a deck keeps its jacket; the same reel left in a construction laydown yard through a Texas summer does not, and UV fade on a jacket is plain in a photograph taken in daylight.

Construction sites set the rules here. A gate, a site induction, a hi-vis requirement and a delivery window are normal, and a collection is usually fitted around a subcontractor's programme rather than the other way about, which is why dates move. A gate that closes at four ends a collection at three.

Laydown yards are where surplus collects, and they are often the easiest place to load: open ground, a forklift on site and room for a trailer. Confirm whether the yard survives project close-out, because the cable often has to move before the fence comes down and the site is handed over. A yard that disappears is a lot that has to be listed early.