Millennium Point CCTV and Surveillance Project — AP Mitchell Fire And Security

Millennium Point Birmingham

Upgrading without pausing on the safety of visitors

The project, which involved full upgrades of the control room and security equipment, was completed in 26 weeks. During this time, it was vital that there was no reduction in security. This was made achievable with keeping the original control room operational while the new one was being built. The new cameras were put online before the old ones were taken down. Alongside this, our friendly security team continuing their patrols and security was never compromised.

It was also important that the work carried out wouldn’t disrupt our customer’s events, our tenants, or visitors. The project involved lots of careful planning throughout with AP Mitchell Group being aware not to cause any inconvenience to any of the customers and staff . Regular meetings and communication were planned throughout the project duration involving David Stanley, The Project Team at AP Mitchell, and the Facilities team from Millennium Point.

Millennium Point continues putting visitors first with the launch of a new high tech security control room

Sleek and bespoke designed control room

The original control room, now 23 years old and becoming obsolete needed a refresh not just in tech but in design also. The whole new CCTV Security Control room was built including bespoke control furniture, a video wall comprising 8 x 44” LED 4K monitors, 2 x Operator control stations each workstation having 3 x 27” LED monitors each station having joystick controllers, allowing the security operators to control the system cameras.

New Video Management software system is now in place which is designed to simplify the control and management of otherwise disparate systems into a centralised graphical user interface. In addition to the streamlining system operations, the software will also increase situational awareness and accountability while reducing risks.

Camera upgrades and radio upgrades

130 cameras were replaced both internally and externally throughout the whole building all sited in strategic locations. There are a mixture of static fixed cameras and full pan tilt zoom cameras. The cameras installed are the very latest in technology giving real time images, along with this, night vision and better-quality cameras increase the quality of the area captured, allowing the security operators to have full CCTV coverage of the whole site. The cameras are all linked into a large network comprising of 11 individual data cabinets linked together with OM4 fibre optic cabling. Each data cabinet has individual data switches backed up with a UPS system.

New digital touch screen radios were also recommended and given to the security team. The radios are digital with better sound quality and has a transmit interrupt capability enabling a supervisor to interrupt and deliver critical communication. It also has lone worker mode which builds safety for our own team. The mode will prompt lone workers to press a button in timed intervals to let the rest of the team know everything is ok.