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An empty basement car park at night, columns lit down the length of the deck.

Stage 03 of 06

Inside the building

If something happened here, could you follow it from one end of the building to the other?

Following somebody

Could you follow somebody from one end of this building to the other?

Somebody walks in at the lobby and leaves by the service door eleven minutes later. Press play on each and watch how far you can follow him.

  • Lobby
  • Lift lobby
  • Open floor
  • Pantry
  • Service door
  • Stair A
  • Service corridor
  • Loading

Covered room by room

  1. LobbySeen
  2. Lift lobbySeen
  3. Open floorSeen
  4. PantrySeen
  5. Not seenNobody covered this route
  6. Not seenNobody covered this route
  7. Service doorSeen
  8. Two ends, no middleThree minutes of him missing

Covered route by route

  1. LobbyPicked up, trail unbroken
  2. Lift lobbyPicked up, trail unbroken
  3. Open floorPicked up, trail unbroken
  4. PantryPicked up, trail unbroken
  5. Service corridorPicked up, trail unbroken
  6. Service corridorPicked up, trail unbroken
  7. Service doorPicked up, trail unbroken
  8. Followed end to endSix positions, no gaps

Covered room by roomEvery room has a camera and every camera is working. You can prove he was in the lobby and prove he was at the service door. You cannot prove how he got between them, and that is the only part anybody will ask about.

Covered route by routeThe same five cameras. Placed at the junctions instead of in the middle of rooms, so the trail holds from the front door to the service door without a single gap.

Nobody undercounted the cameras. The same number of cameras was placed against a floor plan instead of against the way people actually move through it, and a trail with a hole in it is not a trail.

Three vendors normally share this stage. The cameras come from the security contractor, the parking guidance and barrier equipment from a specialist, and the lift with its own contractor who has no obligation to anyone else. The floor-position interface that makes lift footage useful sits precisely between two of them.

What lives at this stage

Everything between the entrance and the room somebody is trying to reach.

  • Continuous route coverageCorridors, lobbies and junctions covered so a person can be followed without a gap.
  • Parking and bay-level camerasWhere vehicles sit unattended for hours, which is where most vehicle incidents actually happen.
  • Lift lobbies and lift carsThe lift is the one place a person is alone, still, and identifiable.
  • StairwellsThe route people use when they do not want to be seen, and the route everybody uses in an evacuation.
  • Service corridors and back-of-houseWhere stock, waste and contractors move, and where coverage is usually thinnest.
  • Coverage continuityNot how many cameras, but whether the coverage joins up. Most estates have both and only count the first.

What fails here

Movement systems fail as gaps, and a gap is invisible until you need to cross it.

These are the six we find most often on assessment. If two of them sound familiar, the rest are probably true on your site as well.

What fails here
What failsWhy it failsWhat it costs
The trail breaks at a junction Cameras placed room by room rather than route by route. You can prove somebody was in two places. You cannot prove how they got between them.
Lift cars uncovered Cabling to a moving car is awkward and gets dropped at value engineering. The one enclosed space where a person is unmistakably identifiable has no record.
Stairwells covered at the top only Coverage specified by floor, so intermediate landings fall between two cameras. Someone is on the third floor, then on the ground floor. What happened between is not recorded.
Parking cameras aimed at cars, not at people Positioned to see bays, which puts every face in profile or behind a pillar. Excellent footage of a vehicle. No usable image of anybody near it.
Back-of-house treated as low risk Coverage budget spent front of house where visitors see it. The route with the least supervision has the least evidence.
Timestamps that do not agree Multiple recorders, none synchronised to a common time source. Two clips of the same event that appear to be minutes apart, which is worse than one clip.

3

Three vendors normally share this stage. None of them owns the gaps between.

The building's own CCTV is one contract, the car park is frequently another, and the lifts are a third who will not permit anybody else to work in the shaft. Every failure above lives in the space between two of them, and the BoQ never said whose job that space was.

So on the day it matters, there is nobody to call. Each vendor can show you their own scope, correctly delivered. Nobody has to answer for the join.

How we specify it

Six decisions that determine whether this stage works in year seven.

  1. Coverage designed as routes, not as roomsWalked on the drawings first, then walked on site, following the paths a person actually takes rather than the ones the plan implies.
  2. Every recorder on one time sourceNTP from a single reference, checked at every service visit, because a trail with disagreeing clocks is not a trail.
  3. Lift cars included at design stage, not value-engineered outThe cost of cabling a lift car after handover is several times the cost of doing it during, and it is the position most likely to matter.
  4. Stairwells covered at every landing, not every floorBecause the landing is where the route changes direction.
  5. Parking specified for people, with vehicles as a by-productCamera height and angle set for a face beside a car, not for a bay from above.
  6. Coverage continuity tested by walking itA person walks the route while somebody watches the recording. Gaps are found by walking, never by counting cameras.

Sector variations

Inside the building means something different depending on what you are protecting.

Jewellery The route that matters is the stock's, not the customer's. Counter to back office to workshop to strongroom, and every hand it passes through.
Healthcare Wards cannot be covered and corridors must be. The line between the two is a privacy decision before it is a technical one.
Malls & retail Common areas are yours and tenanted areas are not. Coverage stops at a boundary that is legal rather than physical.
Data centres Movement is the audit. Every metre between the door and the rack has to be evidenced, because that is what the auditor asks for.

Year seven

This is the stage where coverage quietly stops matching the building.

Buildings change. A wall goes up, a department moves, a corridor becomes storage, a new tenant partitions a floor. Nobody tells the security system. The cameras stay exactly where they were commissioned and the coverage they were designed for no longer exists.

Nothing has failed. Every camera is working. The building simply moved out from under them, and the only way to find out is to walk it again.

What decides whether this stage still works in three years is Maintenance cover and whether anyone has produced a signed condition report since.

Technical reference

Find out

When did anybody last walk your building against the camera layout?

A signed condition report naming what works, what has failed, and what was never commissioned.

The assessment is chargeable, quoted against the site, and adjusted in full against the first year if you take cover. Where cover is not taken, the fee covers our team’s time on site and the report we leave behind, and the report is yours either way.

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