How the ‘Best Place to Live in Illinois’ Chose and Installed Its Video Security Solution
A well-known Chicago suburb, the Village of Schaumburg has a five-year plan to add video security to more than 30 locations.
Pictured above (l-r): Peter Schaak, Director of IT, Village of Schaumburg; Pentegra Systems’ President Greg Augspurger, CEO Ed Karl, Security Engineering Manager Gene Brierton and Sales Manager Jim Lichter; Chris Westgor, Technical Services Manager, Village of Schaumburg. (Photo Courtesy Gene Brierton)
Installing the Solution
The on-the-ground task of managing the installation fell to Chris Westgor, technical services manager for Schaumburg, and Brierton at Pentegra, with remote support and site visits at key milestones from RG&A. Almost immediately, Westgor and Brierton shared the virtue of always looking ahead.
Understanding it was a multiphase project, they seemed to focus on lessons learned, proactively. While this led to some fine-tuning on Phase 1, the idea was to have consistency across all phases, improving quality while being mindful of efficiencies that could be achieved.
Phase 1 included cameras in the Village Hall, Schaumburg’s renowned Prairie Center for the Performing Arts (including an outdoor stage), a senior center, the Engineering and Public Works building (including a fuel station), the municipal airport (including fueling station, terminal building, parking areas and hangars), the commuter rail station, and one of the water towers.
With the number of different venues involved, Pentegra liked the variety. “Each location was different and required adjustment and flexibility to install, and each presented unique challenges to provide the camera views that the village was looking to achieve,” notes Brierton.
This presented a major coordination effort, however. “Proactive communication and scheduling with the village departments and personnel required extra attention. Each has its own daily tasks and calendars that work in conjunction with each other,” he adds. This required multicollaboration, for which Pentegra earned high praise.
“For the most part, unless there were specific issues to address, we didn’t even know Pentegra was there,” remarks Westgor.
Asked to describe a specific area that presented challenges, Brierton pointed to the municipal airport. “The Schaumburg Airport site was one of the most challenging to coordinate since it involved tenants, flight crews, aircraft, village staff and the public on a daily basis,” he says. “There were special power considerations that required specialized cameras and lenses to achieve specific views as well as point-to-point wireless systems for the camera network.”
In particular, RG&A had specified the use of light poles for camera mounting positions that were later ruled out for various considerations, forcing alternate locations to be sought out and mounting methods to achieve the desired views. Pentegra was instrumental in making this happen, offering field modifications and product substitutions that improved upon the initial design.
Pentegra went the extra mile in this and other locations. For example, a specification requirement was to paint conduit and housings to match, to the greatest extent possible. At the airport hangars, this meant using three separate colors to hide the conduit; at the performing arts center where the cameras and wireless antennas were visible as part of the stage, even the antennas were painted to blend in with the surroundings (see photo below).
Water towers required careful consideration as well. “You can’t just drill a hole in a water tower for cabling,” observes Westgor. “Engineering review and approval are essential to minimize the number of penetrations, and cabling sharing the same penetrations needed to be compatible to minimize signal interference.”
As all but one of the water towers are in later phases, this will be an area of focus and coordination going forward.
Asked how working with a municipal contract like Schaumburg is different from working with commercial/industrial clients, Brierton remarks, “There are many departments within a municipal entity that are involved rather than one individual. Collaborating with all departments in a team environment was key to providing a successful project and satisfied customer. Working with the Village of Schaumburg, you begin to understand they are all working together to support their public customers. Working within that environment is much different from a commercial/industrial company that is mainly responsible for its employees at a given facility.”
The system was designed with a distributed architecture to minimize the bandwidth require-ments while maintaining image quality (frame rate, resolution and compression). Aesthetics were considered as well as technology and usability, with devices being painted to blend in with the surroundings (top right).
Learning as You Go
The advantage of a multiyear project is that you aren’t sitting back when it’s all over, talking about what you would do differently in the future. You can implement the improvements you would like to make, even going back to earlier phases to make improvements.
In some areas, pole-mounted cameras were moved to buildings because of power issues at the poles. Server data drives, initially in a JBOD configuration, are slated to be configured as RAID-5 arrays, both in future phases and retroactively for the Phase 1 servers.
Some of the locations with multiple fixed cameras facing different directions on a single pole will be getting multisensor cameras to improve the outward appearance and add camera views. A radio antenna tower that was to be used for a camera mounting platform was replaced, requiring plan modifications to achieve the desired coverage.
The first phase also included several change orders due to unforeseen construction issues. Working closely with Pentegra’s Lichter and Brierton, RG&A did a pricing refresh for Phase 2 that incorporated these lessons learned and should eliminate change orders except for the most extenuating of circumstances.
“This refresh gave us an opportunity to make the unpredictable less so,” says Lichter. “The project team was very receptive to new ideas and applications of the video system when presented, and we’d be foolish not to take advantage of that,” adds Brierton.
As everyone heads into Phase 2, the Phase 1 cameras that had previously been installed were already paying dividends. Without naming specific incidents for confidentiality reasons, Schaak remarked on the comparison of design intent to results.
“We may not have gotten everything on our wish list right away — there are always other considerations, and we are just starting down this road. But we got exactly what we were told we would get during the design process,” he says. Referring to the team of client, consultant and integrator, Schaak concluded, “The team has turned our RFP into reality, and we are happy to see that happen.”
Read on to learn how to deploy a modular system and secure your network…
If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!
Related Content
Security Is Our Business, Too
For professionals who recommend, buy and install all types of electronic security equipment, a free subscription to Commercial Integrator + Security Sales & Integration is like having a consultant on call. You’ll find an ideal balance of technology and business coverage, with installation tips and techniques for products and updates on how to add to your bottom line.
A FREE subscription to the top resource for security and integration industry will prove to be invaluable.
