Supporting town center management and law enforcement, up until 2012, a total of six independent video surveillance systems were in operation across Cumbria, operated independently by six district councils.
Supporting town center management and law enforcement, up until 2012, a total of six independent video surveillance systems were in operation across Cumbria, operated independently by six district councils.
At the time, it was acknowledged by Richard Rhodes, the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) that they were out-of-date, expensive to run and based on analogue technology. Added to this, there were funding shortfalls facing the various district councils who struggled to find the finances to run their stand-alone systems. The implication being that without action taken, by the end of 2013, there wouldn’t have been any operational video surveillance cameras left in the county!
The challenge
Considering the problem and in an effort to develop a sustainable and effective video surveillance system that would help protect communities across the breadth of Cumbria, the PCC launched a countywide video surveillance project, commissioned in conjunction with Eden, Carlisle, Allerdale, Copeland, South Lakeland and Barrow district councils and implemented by Cumbria Constabulary.
To start the ball rolling, the PCC, Local Authorities and Cumbria Constabulary worked with a consultant to write a business case for the requirements of the new system. In essence, the system would need to provide greater all-round efficiency of operation.
To meet its goals, the new system would need to tackle an upgrade in the quality of the existing cameras, link the cameras within the towns of Carlisle, Barrow, Workington, Kendal, Whitehaven and Penrith together and link those six towns to a central location with long distance video and control transmission system.
In addition, the system needed to meet a number of financial and technical challenges, these being:
- Be financially viable within CAPEX budget & with minimal ongoing yearly expenditure
- Cover geographically diverse locations
- Provide high-grade image quality to meet the latest Home Office CAST guidelines
- Provide a minimum of 30 day recording via expandable NVR technology
- Allow full control, management and audit of all operator functions
- Enable integration, monitoring and control via any Police Force PC or designated mobile device
- To include an ‘Evidence Store’ for Criminal Justice System
- 7 control rooms consolidated in to just one, with additional monitoring resilience from 4 other video surveillance terminals located in area police stations
- Full system subject to external IT penetration testing
With the aims of the new scheme defined, the project was put out to tender under OJEU legislation, with a large number of companies tendering via the European standard process. Leading their reply to tender with a proposal that detailed a joined-up physical security, communications and IT system that would yield superior surveillance system performance, along with greater efficiencies and operational cost-reduction, Systems Integrator Tellemachus was awarded the contract to supply the new scheme. Their selection was sited as being due to the company’s response being the most compliant to the specification issued, allied to being highly cost-effective.
The £2.5m contract awarded covers the installation and 7 years managed service level agreement (SLA), to which Tellemachus is solely responsible to maintain the entire system and in every circumstance.
The solution
Reducing ongoing revenue charges, Tellemachus used their wireless & IP knowledge to build a new supporting infrastructure based on best of breed IT equipment, replacing the existing and costly cable based transmission infrastructure with a high-speed wireless network.