Made the grade

An outdated and badly maintained CCTV system let down Treviglas Community College in Newquay.

The comprehensive college for 11-18 year old has enjoyed continual expansion since it was built in the early sixties - in 2003 it became the first college in Cornwall to gain Business & Enterprise Specialist School status, having raised £50,000 and completed a tender for the DfE with a detailed expansion plan.

Recent developments include a new sports hall, entrance hall and reception, sixth form learning centre, professional-standard catering room, two science labs and a music technology department and recording studio. But it was clear as far back as 2003 that the traditional analogue-based CCTV system was not meeting the needs of the college.

Gary Durbin, Assistant Head Teacher, explained: "The old system had often left staff compromised because we could not be sure who, if anyone, had been involved in a recorded incident and we found ourselves backing away on several occasions from dealing with individuals within the wider community as a result of incidents on the college site because of the poor quality CCTV images."

Any new system had to generate and store images of sufficient quality to positively identify individuals for use as evidence. The system also needed to be an effective deterrent to any poor behaviour amongst pupils.

Treviglas College's Headteacher, Helen Mathieson, recognised that the work that integrators Perkins Communications had already done in helping to upgrade the college's network placed them in a unique position to review the deficiencies of the existing security system and recommend improvement.

Frequent outages

The college had a poorly maintained black and white CCTV system which was installed in 1995. Outages and requirement for repairs had become frequent. Problems had been accumulating due to poor maintenance over a long period of time.

Of the total of 16 CCTV cameras deployed in 1995 only three were producing reasonable pictures nine years later. Four were completely unusable and required replacement whilst others were out of focus, corroded, incorrectly sited and/or required refocusing and/or the fitting of auto iris control to reduce picture flare.

Cable glands on some of the external camera housings were undone due to locking nuts on the glands being incorrectly fitted originally. The lack of a preventative maintenance schedule over the years had allowed insects, moisture and salt to enter the housings with inevitable results. Coaxial cabling had been laid loose across the roofs of college buildings, which had created a tripping hazard for those maintaining roofs. Some of the cable was of poor quality and was clearly contributing to poor image quality. The old main multiplexer unit was causing interference and fading and was in urgent need of replacement.

Water in cabling

Keith Perkins, proprietor of Perkins Communications, explained: "The cables for several of the CCTV cameras ran to junction boxes on the flat roof of the college. Mechanical joints had been made without any adequate waterproofing. The boxes were sited in areas prone to the build up of rain water. So within about three years the sealing around the lids of the boxes and cable glands had perished. Water had seeped into the cabling, creating outages. In one case two cables had been inserted through the same compression gland!"

The cost of bringing the existing system up to scratch was estimated to be close to £7,000.The total cost for the system, it was estimated, was about £20, 000 once a new server was purchased to help store video data, new cameras were purchased, configured and integrated.

This estimate also included redeployment of eight existing CCTV cameras via two video servers into the new system. Perkins also identified a possible area of saving by deploying Power over Ethernet-enabled network cameras to eliminate costs that would otherwise be associated with running electrical wiring to new cameras. A number of local CCTV installers were invited to tender alongside Perkins Communications.

The IP-Surveillance system

Two AXIS 241Q video servers with four analogue cameras on each are deployed to take images from existing analogue cameras and relay them into the network. A total of 18 AXIS 211 Network Cameras and one AXIS 2130 PTZ Network Camera were deployed across the entire campus. A total of 27 cameras feed into the Milestone XProtect Enterprise Version 5.0 system for handling, storage and management of camera output. The AXIS 2130 PTZ camera is situated on an 8m column and provides coverage over the adjoining primary school's playground. Since the establishment of this PTZ, problems of vandalism across both sites have been very noticeably reduced.

The benefits of Power over Ethernet

The use of AXIS 211 Power over Ethernet (PoE) network cameras made sense for several reasons. In particular corridors there had very few power outlets and those that were there were not situated at ceiling height, creating the need for a great deal of wiring if the college was going to provide power to devices in the traditional way. The presence of asbestos in one building meant that any new wires would have to have been carried in unsightly plastic retainers which tended to fall or be ripped off walls and ceilings over time.

Perkins explained the benefits of centralised power management for IP surveillance systems: "PoE has a potential additional advantage of building greater resilience into the surveillance system. A UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) or 3Com's redundant power supply can very easily be connected to each 3Com 4400 Switch PWR."

The savings gained from not providing a wired electricity supply to 18 new cameras was at least £1,800. These savings were enough to immediately pay for any costs associated with buying and deploying PoE-enabled switches that in total could power 120 devices.

Managing access to cameras

Helen Mathieson was keen to avoid any possible abuse or misuse of access to surveillance images and to this end has barred all access to the cameras direct from web browsers by ensuring that username and password access is strictly enforced. She only takes account of video evidence when supplied to her by the IT department and when there is clear evidence of actions which require a formal investigation or reprimand which might, for example, lead to exclusion.

Gary Durbin, Assistant Head Teacher, concludes: "The new system is completely reliable. Authorised staff have come to trust the system to the point where they now drop into the IT department to ask specific designated contacts there to locate a security event that they have heard about or witnessed earlier in the day. It's always there and the quality is always high enough to identify individuals. With the old system there always seemed to be a reason why the image wasn't available. The camera might be obscured or not functioning or perhaps the multiplexer wasn't working properly. This simply wasn't good enough. Reliability is the key with these sorts of systems in order to encourage people to rely on them. We finally have that reliability and the required quality of output with the new IP-based system."

Into the future

The college is planning to deploy an additional three AXIS 213 PTZ network cameras to monitor remaining boundaries and is also considering installing two further cameras in the reception area. A fibre optic cable links the primary school next door and there have been discussions about extending the surveillance system to cover it.

The Milestone XProtect system also offers the capability of integrating the access control system with the college's IP surveillance system over time. Because the upgrade of the network brought in surveillance and the two pieces of work happened sequentially, working with the same local integration partner, very little additional network equipment was required and significant installation savings were made.