Mission: integrated security management
University Campus Suffolk (UCS) opened its doors officially in August 2007 and as such is one the UK's newest higher education institutions in the UK. UCS is a partnership between the Universities of East Anglia and Essex. It has a developing main campus in Ipswich, which is part of an ambitious harbour redevelopment programme at Ipswich Dock on the banks of the River Orwell.
The first building to be completed in this new campus, the £31 million Waterfront Building, welcomed its first students in September 2008. This landmark six-floor building features two large lecture theatres and 34 teaching rooms. Tony Russell, Head of Facilities Management at UCS, was responsible for commissioning an entire integrated security management system for the new Waterfront building to ensure the safety and security of students, staff and premises.
A Strategic Solution
UCS worked together with Milestone partner Check Your Security (CYS) to devise a strategic blueprint for surveillance and access control for the Waterfront. This strategy would also be adopted across future UCS buildings at Orwell Quay, such as the James Hehir Building opening in early 2011. CYS had previously introduced UCS to Milestone XProtect Enterprise video management software (VMS) after they had successfully integrated Milestone software at another UCS site at St Edmunds House in Ipswich. Tony Russell was impressed with the solution there, which brought together Milestone VMS with Mobotix network cameras and Cardax door access control. Together with the Waterfront's mechanical and electrical (M&E) contractor, CYS installed 71 Mobotix network cameras to be managed by Milestone XProtect Enterprise with all images stored on a central server, plus Cardax access control readers on 81 doors.
Result: a flexible backbone for safety
Milestone acts as the backbone for the security solution at UCS, which ensures students, staff and visitors are safe and secure. With Milestone XProtect Enterprise, Tony Russell and his security team can quickly access high quality images via the XProtect Smart Client using any network PC, to gather vital intelligence on potential threats and to quickly track incidents across the cameras positioned in strategic locations around the Waterfront. The deployment of Milestone XProtect Enterprise also future-proofs the solution as it can scale up to 10,000 devices. With Milestone's commitment to open standards, UCS has an eye to the future with the ability to expand and develop its surveillance systems to incorporate the latest surveillance innovations as they become available on the market.
"I insisted on Milestone for our Waterfront Building. Check Your Security had already proven the success of Milestone in an earlier installation. It was also strongly recommended by other local universities such as the University of East Anglia. Milestone allows me to be onsite without having to be there physically - 24x7. The ability to access camera images on my laptop from wherever I am and use Milestone's front-end to quickly establish what is going on around and inside the building is invaluable. Milestone also future-proofs our security investment - allowing us to increase camera numbers and take advantage of any new innovations and integrations into the Milestone platform as they become available." Tony Russell, Head of Facilities Management, University Campus Suffolk University Campus Suffolk
University Campus Suffolk's (UCS) brand new campus ‘hub' based at Orwell Quay in Ipswich began with the £31 million Waterfront Building, which welcomed its first students in September 2008. This landmark six-floor building features two large lecture theatres, 34 teaching rooms and is the main teaching, learning and social space of UCS. Tony Russell, head of facilities management at UCS, was responsible for commissioning an entire integrated security management system for the new Waterfront building to ensure the safety and security of students, staff and premises.
Managing surveillance to enhance student experience
UCS strives to build a reputation for excellence across all of its activities and this includes its approach to security and surveillance management. Tony Russell, head of facilities management at UCS worked closely with Milestone partner, Check Your Security (CYS)to shape the vision for security at the university. CYS has built a reputation for delivering high quality surveillance solutions for the education sector and has been instrumental in modernising security management, integrating surveillance and access control for UCS' partner university - University of East Anglia.
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| Tony Russell, Head of Facilities Management, University Campus Suffolk University Campus Suffolk |
CYS had impressed Tony with a smaller installation at one of the initial UCS offices, St Edmund's House in Ipswich, which is owned by Suffolk County Council. At St Edmund's House, CYS successfully integrated Milestone XProtect video management software with Mobotix network cameras. The installation also included door access control from leading vendor Cardax. The reliability, ease-of-use, depth of functionality and commitment to open systems offered by Milestone set the benchmark for the solutions to be deployed in the new buildings.
Working with the mechanical and electrical (M&E) contractors for the Waterfront project, together with CYS, Tony defined a vision for security and surveillance for the Waterfront and the other two key buildings within Phase One of the UCS building programme. In planning, no specific security threats were envisaged for the Waterfront but core security principles guided the strategy. The key was to provide surveillance to secure entrances, exits, perimeters, high traffic areas and vital building plant and machinery. Access control would allow UCS' vision of ensuring the wider community can be welcomed to the Waterfront. The public have free access to the ground floor galleries, cafes and information centres, for example. Students and staff use door pass cards to gain access to areas as defined by security with regards to their individual profile.
Milestone at the heart of the UCS system
Milestone XProtect Enterprise video management software is at the core of the Waterfront security installation, which consists of 71 Mobotix network cameras, including 65 models split between Mobotix M12 dual lens 3 megapixel day/night cameras and Mobotix D12 dome dual lens 3 megapixel day/night cameras. Axis 233D high speed dome network cameras are also used for external monitoring.
XProtect Enterprise ‘self-discovers' all of the cameras on the network with its automatic hardware detection wizard and allows customised management of the video frame rates for recording the images from each camera, ensuring higher frame rates for areas of high activity or where fine image detail is required and intelligently adjusting to lower frame rates for cameras covering quieter areas. This saves bandwidth in network utilisation.
For access control, 108 Cardax proximity card readers protect 81 doors. A total of 14 Cardax door controllers control up to eight readers each. The Cardax controllers are all linked to the UCS IT network and connect into Cardax Command Centre Server.
Milestone XProtect Enterprise gives UCS the ability to integrate Cardax access control. The university is therefore planning to use Milestone to bring together event data from Cardax with images from all network cameras, delivering vital surveillance to support access control incidents.
Managing access/ID cards for 5,000 students and 400 staff is a complex and costly business. UCS uses Microsoft Active Directory, which contains all key identification data about UCS students and employees. Identification records include the courses students are attending and give security and IT access privileges in line with individual requirements. To prevent the creation of an additional cardholder database for use with Cardax Command Centre, CYS integrated the university's Microsoft Active Directory database with Cardax. This ensures the latest data is always used automatically, saving vital staff time and resources. CYS has also worked with UCS to bring the ID card production in-house to cut the costs of producing access cards by 70% and deliver a next-day service.
UCS operates a 24-hour control room, which contains a single plasma display screen monitor showing all output from Milestone XProtect. All images from the 71 cameras are recorded onto a single server and stored for 28 days. Milestone XProtect allows video to be searched quickly through operator selection of specific camera views, times and dates, or ‘by event' such as when motion has been detected in a restricted zone. Discs containing video footage of incidents have been produced from the Milestone system for police purposes.
One of the biggest benefits for Tony is the use of Milestone XProtect Smart Client, allowing him to log in to any PC and access all the regular software functions such as simultaneous live view and playback from all cameras, intelligent Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) functions, advanced search features and export of evidence material.
In over two years of operation, the Milestone system has been 100% reliable. Although there have only been a handful of minor incidents during these two years, Milestone has enabled UCS to manage these effectively, through both live tracking and analysis of recorded images. Milestone also helps UCS to work much more efficiently. Tony Russell is now able to use the system to deploy his security staff to exactly where they are required and provide intelligence to them before they arrive.
Future integrations
There are plans to extend the Milestone XProtect platform further with use of automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) linked to barrier controls for the student and staff car parks at UCS. UCS will also expand the use of Milestone XProtect software to cover cameras throughout the brand new James Hehir Building - a six-floor teaching facility less than a quarter of a mile from Waterfront.
