Located in Pontefract, the facility is indicative of the Council’s support of – and confidence in – the accumulative rewards brought about by a comprehensive surveillance system.
The original control facility was located in the centre of Wakefield in a building the Council’s monitoring operation had begun to outgrow after ten years in residence. Not only that, but advancements in CCTV technology were highlighting the need for change. Still over 60% tape-based, the recording facility was proving to be labour intensive, absorbing more of the Control Room operators’ valuable time as system camera coverage was expanded.
In unison with Wakefield Metropolitan District Council’s desire to streamline its occupancy of many small buildings, and to consolidate into fewer but larger premises (in turn minimising overhead costs), it was decided that a move to a bespoke facility in Pontefract – an existing Council building, in fact – would provide a practical solution and a timely opportunity to rethink the technical operational solutions required within the Control Room.
Designing the Control Room from scratch
Darren Pollington – CCTV manager for Wakefield Metropolitan District Council – told SMT Online: “Given that we were effectively being handed an opportunity to design a Control Room from scratch, we were determined to make the solution absolutely right for our needs while taking into account any future expansion capacity the system’s success would inevitably bring.”
Fixing their sights on the best technology available and working to specific needs, Pollington and the security team prepared a comprehensive tender document that was eventually won by national installation company Quadrant Security Group.
“Visiting a number of existing Control Rooms that included a variety of control and recording systems supplied by several manufacturers enabled us to evaluate individual solutions in a ‘real world’ environment. We were able to make an accurate evaluation of each product for ourselves,” added Pollington. “Based on past experience, it became clear that the multi-vendor needs of our system – which contains a host of equipment of varying ages and from many different manufacturers – would be best met by the third party integration capabilities provided by a SynergyPro solution in combination with the Modular Digital Recording System.”
Timescales for the move of the control facility were extremely tight, with only a nine-month period elapsing between initial stages of the tender through to completion and commissioning of the new resource.
Pollington continued: “It was important that my staff were ‘ready to go live’ and fully familiar with the new Synectics system from Day One of the facility’s ‘re-opening’. Synectics addressed this with the integration of a SynergyPro workstation in the existing Wakefield Control Room a full six months before our move date. This meant that our operators were able to take advantage of the comprehensive system training provided, and learn at an accelerated rate within a camera network with which they were already familiar.”
Multi-purpose security and IT space
Meanwhile, no less than 80 fibre cables were re-directed to the new Pontefract Control Room, also designed to house all of the Council’s other IT facilities in a purpose built, climate-controlled server room complete with a dedicated electrical sub-station and back up generator. This enables the building to operate as normal even when there may have been a catastrophic power failure.
Following successful transition of control from the previous facility, the Control Room operators now use five Synergy positions to control over 160 cameras from the surrounding area covering the towns of, Wakefield, Pontefract, Castleford, Ossett, Normanton, South Elmsall, Hemsworth and Featherstone (in addition to Council waste sites and a railway station).
The advanced technology within the new Control Room has also created the capacity to monitor third party sites (including The National Cole Mining Museum, a major water sports facility and a large country park), thus helping the Council to offset the daily cost of running the facility.
Wide operational skills set called upon
Monitoring such a vast network of cameras calls on a variety of skills to be displayed by members of the experienced operator team.
“Operators are constantly adjusting their skill sets when monitoring such a large camera network, that can go from the busy shopping streets of Pontefract and Wakefield to the remote train stations and smaller towns like South Elmsall and Hemsworth,” suggested Pollington. “What constitutes an incident at one site requiring further investigation may be an everyday occurrence at another. Different times of day also require an adjusted skill set. For example, town centre incidents, usually focusing on the popular nightspots in each area during the evening, are vastly different to those we may experience during the day that are usually targeted on the retail areas.”
Pollington added: “Encompassing the changing role of CCTV within the wider community, we use the system to monitor traffic flow within the town centres and assist in the planning and organising of large events. We’re integral to the Wakefield Metropolitan District Council’s emergency incident plans. We have even had incidents where we have tracked stolen cars via our camera network, and directed police to efficiently intercept and stop those cars. Effectively chasing the vehicle via the cameras prevents the risk to the public that a genuine vehicular chase may involve.”
SynergyPro assists Pollington’s team members with the day-to-day monitoring via its intuitive operator interface and intuitive route to all system functions. During the area’s recent flooding episode, Pollington and his team were instrumental in the monitoring of critical areas of the county, giving up-to-the-minute information on the affected areas to the emergency services.
Retail radios, Help Points and Helplines
Synectics’ integration abilities have been key to the success of the technological transition from the old Control Room to the all-encompassing new facility. Harnessing the power of this technology, in assistance to the camera network, operators can access retail radios, 25 audio Help Points throughout the network and four telephone Helplines situated at the remote rail stations monitored.
Pollington explained: “Right from the specification of the tender it was important that all these disparate technologies could be accessed and recorded at one point. Synectics’ ability to record all these video and audio feeds not only allowed our team to access all these functions from one point, and maximise efficiency, but also provided the peace of mind that all aspects of the incident were being recorded should any retrospective investigation be necessary.”
Recording in real-time, 24 hours per day, the Synectics Modular Digital Recording System’s digital storage permits instantly accessible, retrospective video review from each operator’s Synergy position, or a dedicated workstation (for third party or police review). This affords operators with instant confirmation of any event they may have seen on screen.
Via the Synergy system, operators can instantly access the recorded footage from the start of any incident. This is a powerful feature available to operators who may have need to quickly identify and relay individuals responsible for starting a disturbance, and to police officers arriving at the incident scene.
Alternatively, officers wanting to retrospectively investigate an incident they may have just attended can request footage for review, or that it’s burned to DVD along with an audited evidential trail for offsite review or prosecution use.
Pollington went on to say: “The ability to react quickly and efficiently in these situations is paramount to an effective conviction. We have a dedicated police constable based in our Control Room who works through each open case, rapidly accessing any captured footage from her own review station and processing it as evidence for the case. Using our new technology, we can either present the visual information in our dedicated review suite or burn the footage to DVD.”
Maximising operators’ time
The streamlining of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council’s CCTV Control Room has succeeded in maximising operators’ time. Members of the team’s pro-active approach to CCTV surveillance, backed by a single and intuitive interface, has contributed to a vast improvement in detection rates since the switch was made. An average of between three and four arrests per day are directly attributable to operators in the new Pontefract Control Room.
