A competitive tender to upgrade the community safety CCTV and communications infrastructure for Calderdale Council has gone to BT.
The contract involves consolidating CCTV from seven towns in the Yorkshire council area into a single new digital CCTV transmission network and the construction of a new central control and monitoring centre. The £500k project involves the convergence of the council’s telephone and IT systems within the newly created data centre.
Nick Stevenson, Project Manager, Community Support, Calderdale Council, said: "BT offered the best value for money. Theirs was the only tender that included a detailed, fully thought-through plan for how we could converge all of our systems and develop them . Calderdale Council wanted to bring all of our communications – voice, data, CCTV image data, radio, wireless IP and so on – together over the same single new digital network. BT are the ideal partner to help us achieve this.”
Joe Fielder, Sales & Marketing Director, BT Security Solutions said: "Calderdale’s vision to develop an integrated data communications strategy means that we have been able help them to realise significant improvements in overall system operation and maintenance costs. We are delighted that – in awarding BT the contract – Calderdale has recognised the depth of experience BT can bring, particularly in delivering cost effective, secure and highly resilient converged CCTV, voice and data communications solutions."
Calderdale’s community safety CCTV strategy includes a plan to develop a common communications infrastructure with the members of the local Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership.
Peter Woodhouse, QPM, is CCTV Manager at Calderdale. He said: "The strategy is to make all districts safer for residents, visitors and business in the community. We’re trying to create ‘safe corridors’ covering all types of public places where people may be at risk – car parks, taxi ranks, hospitals, supermarkets, railway stations, housing estates and town centre shopping arcades. Many of these places already have CCTV cameras. The new points of presence that the new BT transmission network will give us means we will be able to begin to bring the private sector on board.”
Procurement for the complex project was through the OGC – the Office of Government Commerce – using its ‘Convergent Solutions’ framework. It is the first time that a council CCTV project has been procured under this OGC framework. The project will be primarily funded by Calderdale, with a contribution by West Yorkshire Police. The seven towns involved in the project are Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd, Todmorden, Brighouse, Sowerby Bridge, Elland and Halifax.
