Controlware Communications Systems

Mission
The £800m refurbishment and extension of St Pancras International is part of HS1, Britain’s first major rail project for over a century and the UK’s biggest ever construction project. Opened by the Queen this prestigious landmark required an advanced CCTV solution to help protect staff, customers, and visitors to the station. Controlware won the contract on the basis of the advanced technical solution, integration expertise, and the proven ability to deliver large projects successfully.

Solution
Working closely with the Costain, O’Rourke, Bachy and Emcor Rail (CORBER) consortium and Rail Link Engineering (RLE) the 450-camera solution includes a mixture of cameras, codec’s, networked storage and an advanced management platform that provides access to live, DVD quality video. The comprehensive IP surveillance solution provides control of security operations and enables resources to be easily coordinated to meet specific incidents as they happen. Accessing recorded video is made easier through time and date-based searches and since digital recording is used no videotapes are required, saving both time and costs. The surveillance network is also highly scalable to support growth of cameras and storage requirements in the future as the recent integration of the NCP CCTV network has demonstrated.

Result
The new CCTV solution not only helps maintain security and safety but also delivers improved flexibility, reliability and operational benefits as well. By using a unified network for video, data and voice cabling costs are reduced. User access to multiple systems such as Access Control, CCTV, Fire, and Building Control is simplified through a single common interface that provides fast access to detailed information. Training costs are also significantly reduced since each user only needs to be trained on a single system. Easy to use management tools provide users with fast access to live and recorded video from multiple locations either inside or outside of the station. This improves resilience and helps innovate the way that individual departments work. Station announcers for example now have access to live video from platform cameras allowing more accurate announcements to be made and resources to be guided to incidents as they happen, directly improving delivery of information and services and increasing safety for passengers.