Vertical Markets

London CCTV upgrade

by Mark Rowe

A case study on new CCTV installed by Link CCTV Systems at eight University of London halls of residence buildings.

The new systems provide fixed static camera monitoring of all points of entry-exit and security reception areas, with the high resolution images recorded in real time and stored at full frame rate for 31 days on Samsung SRD-1670DC Digital Video Recorders (DVRs).

The project was driven by the on-site TFM (total facilities management) provider, Balfour Beatty WorkPlace (BBW) which manages 31 buildings for the university, including the eight halls of residence buildings and an external precinct in the Bloomsbury area of central London, which provides access routes to several colleges within the area, including SOAS and Birkbeck. Balfour Beatty WorkPlace provides facilities management services to sites across the university estate. Its team, working with the university’s FM team, delivers services including mechanical and electrical maintenance, grounds, security, reception, post and cleaning.

Of the 31 buildings that BBW manage, 14 buildings and the external precinct area were already covered by CCTV. For the safety and security of its students, visitors and guests, the university took the decision to address any shortcomings in the systems and to introduce time-saving efficiencies.

BBW, under instruction from the university, put this improvement work out to tender and Link CCTV Systems won the contract to project-manage, from survey and design through to installation and maintenance. Link CCTV Systems’ brief was to increase CCTV coverage by providing fixed detailed views of all points of entry/exit and security reception areas and to improve the quality of the live and recorded images. The company was tasked to improve the safety and security to the halls by way of enabling building management and security staff to remotely view live and recorded images and hence remove the need to visit each site to review footage.

Link CCTV Systems were also awarded the contract to project-manage the re-location of the university’s CCTV control room from Senate House in Malet Street to Stewart House in nearby Russell Square. The control room was due for refurbishment and this provided an opportunity to upgrade the CCTV and associated equipment.

Link CCTV Systems designed operators’ workstations and a supervisor’s desk for the new room in Stewart House, as well as deploying a new CCTV control room monitor display. The company also migrated all the CCTV cameras to the new control room. Samsung Techwin ‘real time’ digital recording equipment was providing real time recorded images for all precinct and local building cameras.

The SRD-1670DC is able to simultaneously record in real time high quality 4CIF images across all of its 16 channels. It has the capacity for five SATA HDDs, offering the potential for 10TB of on-board storage and utilises H.264 compression to minimise bandwidth requirements whilst maintaining image quality, the makers say. It can also if required record audio across all channels and has USB ports for export of video.

Using a site-wide LAN, the live and recorded images are available for the university Building Management teams and Balfour Beatty WorkPlace security team, by using Samsung’s Net-i Ware or SmartViewer software. By clicking on one of the multiple layered maps, relevant camera images can be displayed on the monitor wall or local operator’s console.

The control room was small, enclosed and ineffective compared to the new light, airy and spacious room, which gives the potential to move to 24 hour surveillance.

During the relocation Link CCTV supplied and installed more than 90 cameras in Senate House, Stewart House and the precinct areas, and in the process diverted about 400m of cabling while handling issues such as listed building status, accessing cabling in underground tunnels and the logistics of moving men and equipment between buildings almost a quarter of a mile apart.

About Link CCTV Systems

Since the late 1990’s, Link CCTV Systems have been designing, installing and maintaining CCTV, access control and integrated systems for commercial and corporate clients throughout the UK.

From humble beginnings as regional installer/ maintainer, Link CCTV now supplies and maintains systems for some of Europe’s biggest corporations and groups on over 450 sites nationally. Link maintain a range of systems from schools and universities to government and corporate offices, retail parks, haulage depots and high-profile shopping centres; some 116 national shopping centres and retail outlets, representing over a quarter of the UK market. Operating from sales and service offices, in Knebworth and Stevenage respectively, Link offers support to nationally distributed of Area Service Managers (ASMs) and Business Development Managers.

For more information email [email protected] or call 01438 812900.

George Kingston contact details: ring 01462 416384 or email: [email protected]

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