Equipment provider Genie CCTV has supplied a variety of equipment for Wigan Council’s new control room.
Monitoring a 600-plus camera system, covered seven town centres, three shopping precincts, two residential areas and various private locations spread across a 77 square-mile area.
Having moved out of its former, cramped surroundings into a larger converted suite, the new control room is dedicated to public space surveillance duties but also handles a number of commercial contracts for operations including bus and rail stations, car parks and offices. Overseeing the specification of equipment for the new control centre, the council’s principal officers, Tony Hollinrake and Terry Bolton, actively sought practical staff feedback and trialled different systems under live monitoring conditions before making a decision.
"As a result of this rigorous evaluation exercise, Genie’s monitors were declared by our operators to be clearer in terms of definition and clarity than a number of rival products that we also tested out, so we purchased 20 LM-19 Pro TFT LCD 19-inch professional units and these have been used around the clock proving excellent value and a fantastic investment for us," Tony reports.
The equipment list also includes VRCD-5351 day/night external vandal resistant dome cameras, along with GSD-5451 mini PTZ dome cameras offering a 10x optical zoom. Additionally, Genie’s GDVR160 16-channel Quadraplex MPEG4 DVRs are in operation, with the LG 16-channel Pentaplex LE3116D DVR, offering up to 4Tb of internal storage capacity, and its EDVR4 four-channel Triplex DVR.
All of these help the monitoring suite operators to keep an eye for security and safety-related incidents in Wigan itself, as well as Leigh, Atherton and Golborne. The council area has a population of some 300,000 and Wigan town centre is said to have more clubs and bars than any other north-west town in England, requiring real-time monitoring to ensure any problems don’t escalate into anything more serious.
Tony and Terry are also familiar with specifying Genie CCTV equipment in their other role as proprietors of security design and consultancy provider Bespoke Security Solutions. Offering risk management, design and consultancy, project management and installation services, based on their collective 30-plus years of security industry, local authority and policing experience, Bespoke’s client list includes work completed around the country for Carillion, Deutsche Bank, Virgin Media, Unilever and other blue-chip companies such as Centrica.
"We value our important long-term relationship with Genie CCTV as a key supplier to our range of installation services for CCTV/IP systems, as well as access control and intruder alarm services," Tony Hollinrake says.
"We’re delighted that Wigan council has given us such a glowing endorsement of our equipment – both because of its comparative performance against our rivals’ systems during the pre-installation testing phase, and its subsequent reliability in real-life 24/7 use within the new control room," adds Binit Shah, Marketing Manager at Genie.
