3 Campuses, 12 Buildings, 102 Cameras, 55 Doors, New Intrusion and Alarm System. One Weekend, One Great Team!
Saint Stephen’s and Saint Agnes School is a college preparatory Episcopal church school in the Diocese of Virginia, located in Alexandria, Virginia, that educates boys and girls from junior kindergarten through grade 12.
Their commitment to live their mission statement and to inspire a passion for learning, enthusiasm for artistic and athletic endeavors, a striving for excellence, celebration of diversity, and a commitment to service creates a unique learning environment for all students.
Recently, they also demonstrated their commitment to delivering a best-in-class environment for the safety and security of their students, faculty, and staff. The school wanted a fully integrated, electronic security system that allowed them to respond efficiently and immediately to a threat.
Surveillance Secure, in partnership with Alliance Technology Group and Genetech, completed a full overhaul of their surveillance, access, and intrusion systems. Several technical teams supported by Surveillance Secure leadership worked through a three-day holiday weekend to remove the legacy systems and install and enable the new system on all three campuses.
“The legacy system was essentially several stand-alone silos for each element. That required multiple logins and longer times to find and capture time-sensitive information. The new system is fully integrated with access provided through a single path and is much more user friendly to provide real-time information for decision making and response,” shares Allied Tech project leader Andrew Keys.
Among the many benefits of the newly integrated system is an ability to instantly lock down each facility in the event of a need to do so. Enhanced video feeds and upgraded image quality adds to the deterrent as well as the investigative efficiency.
How did the six-month process of design and approval result in implementation of such a sizable project in such a short time? There are many elements; here are some that moved the needle to high efficiency and effective cost control:
- Proper facility analysis and pre-work leading to proper project design and plan
- Coordinated communication and established team leadership cooperation
- Clear instructions for workflow to each technical installation team
- Subject matter technical expertise focused on their individual task area, most skilled doing what they do best
- Immediate communication of unexpected issues when discovered; team coordination of solutions
- Continuous supervisory presence and inspection of task completion to verify operational status and project progress
- Testing, verification, and agreement on operational functionality
- Full system documentation
Led by company President, Kim Hartman, the project design, installation, networking and testing took unwavering commitment from the Surveillance Secure team members to execute. A full three-day holiday weekend of the company’s technicians, consisting of 12 to 14 hour days, staying in hotels to minimize required travel time, pizza on the run, and going from campus to campus as the work progressed were just some of the things needed to get the job done on schedule.
The end result is a new level of safety for the school and its students, a demonstration of great teamwork, and a reason to feel pride in a tough job, well done. St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School is now able to better protect its students, respond promptly to a threat, and have better control over their campus security, providing a safer environment for education.
Virginia DCJS Private Security Services ID #11-6085