CCTV Installation for Schools, Colleges and Universities

CCTV Camera, CCTV System, CCTV DVR
CCTV Installers, CCTV Installation

Installing CCTV Systems in schools especially Primary and Secondary schools are not always that easy. The CCTV Installers needs to be vetted and CRB checked. Only the right people should be let into schools to work so it is very important to adhere to all safety regulations both for the school and the pupils safety as well as for your CCTV Installers.

Once you have selected the right people to carry out the CCTV Installation, and set the date and time with the school, then it is time to carry out a thorough site inspection, in addition to the one that was carried out before the quotation was sent out to the school.

During the site inspection you also carry out a risk assessment which then will be signed by the appropriate person. This is a very important step to not miss out before the installation starts. This risk assessment is for the engineers own safety as well as the pupils. It is vital to ensure that all aspects of Health and Safety is covered. This includes wearing the correct safety equipment, such as safety boots - this is a must on ALL sites, vests and safety hats - only where required.

Safety on ladders, many accidents happens during CCTV Installation due to sloppy work with ladders. You need to take your time and make the extra effort to ensure all aspects of safety on ladders are thought of. Accidents happens so easily!

After the initial inspections, its time to start work!

The most time consuming and probably the hardest work in an CCTV Installation is to carry out the cabling. This not only need to be done as neatly as possible but also finding your way through walls and ceilings without drilling into pipes is not easy work.

Therefore I always recommend to hire a professional team to do this work for you.

The trickiest bit of the cabling is as mentioned already to find your way around the building. One example I can give, is when we had CCTV Cameras installed in our home it took most part of the day just finding our way where the cables could go.

First you select the spot where your CCTV DVR should be located, then from there you need to find the best route of the cabling to go to the place where your CCTV Camera will be installed.

In our case, we had selected the top floor office to house the CCTV DVR, then we had already decided that two CCTV Cameras would go at the front of the house, one on the side and two at the back. The two CCTV Cameras at the front and the one CCTV Camera at the side had to go the same route, cabling wise.

That meant from the top floor office, through the wall into our airing cupboard as we initially believed that this cupboard was directly above the garage, so we wanted to then drill a hole in the cupboard floor to go down to the garage ceiling. However when we drilled a hole from the garage ceiling into where we thought the cupboard was located, it turned out that it was not the right place.

So from then on we had to find another route to get the cabling done. It turned out we had to open up the cupboard underneath the sink in the family bathroom (as this is the adjoining room to the airing cupboard), drill a hole in the garage ceiling, take a fishing rod and push through the hole just drilled until we could see where it came out in the bathroom floor in the cupboard underneath the sink.

Once you have all the holes drilled you take the same fishing rod and tape the CCTV Cabling to the fishing rod. Then you push it from the garage up to the bathroom cupboard, then through the wall into the airing cupboard, finally from the airing cupboard into the upstairs office, where we had drilled a hole from the airing cupboard to behind the permanent desk we have got in the office so it was nicely hidden.

Once the cables had all been clipped to the ceilings, walls and floors accordingly, we went from the airing cupboard up into the loft. That was a bit easier as you in the loft could just cable clip the CCTV Cabling onto the wooden framework in the loft.

When we finally had found a route for all the CCTV Cameras cabling, it was time to mount the cameras!

This same method is applied to any CCTV Installation, although in School installation you tend to use a lot of trunking to hide cabling and usually trunking is already installed for various other cabling they have already aquired.

When cabling is in place, the CCTV Cameras needs to be mounted and connected to the cables. The CCTV Cables also includes power cable so you will have two connections to make.

The most tricky bit about mounting the cameras is actually not the mouting itself, this is pretty simple. It is to set them up so they cover the area you want to cover and to get the focus etc correctly set.

If CCTV Cameras are in place, you then need to terminte the cabling to the CCTV DVR and go through each and every camera angle and ensure the viewing is what you expect / was hoping for.

The best way of setting up the CCTV Cameras is to have one engineer at the camera side who can turn and twist and re focus it and somebody sitting viewing the footage at the CCTV DVR side. You can use your mobile phone or walkie talkies to communicate.