Cirencester College

The college already had an existing CCTV system of over 100 cameras covering the campus – a mix of Dahua and Hikvision cameras. However, the college had three different recorders with no connection or integration between them, all of which could only be monitored locally. This caused a number of challenges:

• Investigation time was increased because searching for an incident across multiple cameras required local access to individual NVRs. Footage had to be manually downloaded from each NVR and saved on a USB stick.
• While the NVRs could be accessed on the network, it required three different logins, and you had to log in and out of each one.
• Remote access to the NVRs off-site required a VPN, making mobile and browser access difficult to achieve securely.
• The current system didn’t allow any room for expansion in terms of storage or hardware capability.
• The search features were basic time-based search – fast forward and rewind until you found the person or incident you were looking for.
• It was complicated to use and had three different user interfaces across the campus.
• It was difficult for the college to provide access to the CCTV for any users, as they couldn’t restrict access to certain cameras or remove the ability to download footage.
• They couldn’t afford to update all the cameras but wanted an upgrade path for cameras and a system that supported multiple camera manufacturers.
• Uptime is critical for safety and security, and their current NVRs could take weeks to fix if they were faulty, or they would have to replace them entirely.

On top of this, many of the cameras were also quite dated, with poor resolution and no smart features. This made managing security across the campus extremely difficult.

The recent expansions and increase in student numbers had only exacerbated this problem, with the periods between lessons likened to “being at a festival” due to the sheer volumes of people moving around the site.

Compounding things even further was the nature of the campus itself. Cirencester College is open plan – no walls or fences surround the site, which backs onto a caravan park and the grounds of an 18th-century country house. While the college had no intention of changing this setup, the open plan meant people could enter and exit the site from almost any direction and at any time. If they were to effectively safeguard students and protect the campus outside of hours, the CCTV system desperately needed to be updated.

However, due to the lean nature of education operations, the college needed to outsource the entire design and installation process to minimise costs. One member of their security team had previously worked at New College Swindon, where we had previously installed a high-end CCTV system, and recommended that we be contacted to design and install this one as well.

One of our first actions was to demonstrate the value of an Avigilon Alta (Ava, at the time) setup to unify and improve the CCTV systems they already had. All but the very oldest cameras on site could be fitted with a cloud connector, so they could be viewed from any computer on site, or even remotely with the right login.

The Avigilon Alta system instantly made all their old cameras “smart”, enabling the security team to search for individuals by appearance, track people moving around campus, bookmark events and share footage via a link – making monitoring the site considerably easier.

All video footage would now be stored on a 160-terabyte server, the largest offered by Avigilon Alta at the time. This would have capacity for up to 200 cameras – more than enough extra space for the cameras that would be needed to cover the buildings still being constructed. Due to the throughput bandwidth requirements, we configured two 10Gbit network interface cards to accommodate the amount of network traffic from the cameras.

When it came time to set up the system, we were able to migrate over every single camera in one day, minimising downtime.

The increased accessibility of the system has allowed for greatly enhanced monitoring of the campus. Incidents can be identified rapidly, repeat troublemakers can be tracked, and trespassers can be flagged and located automatically, improving security and safeguarding at all times of day. What’s more, the system is so user-friendly that less-specialised security staff can be tasked with monitoring the campus, freeing up the main security team to handle any incidents that may occur.

Of course, we also had the challenge of installing 43 new cameras across a campus that is constantly in use. We negotiated with the client out-of-hours working so as not to disturb normal day-to-day operation.

The project included over 220m of underground ducting and three CCTV columns. All columns were supplied with power, fibre network and network switch – all provided and managed by Chris Lewis Group. We also installed some wireless point-to-point links for some of the cameras, as groundworks were not possible due to a newly finished car park area and the cost involved in excavation.