Managing a shopping centre is not a simple task, and after a recent visit to the Douglas Village shopping centre in Cork, Ireland, I had the opportunity to appreciate just how much of an art and a science there is to it and the role that video surveillance can play.
Article reproduced with permission from CCTV Image
The art of managing a shopping centre is knowing as much as possible about your centre, its tenant businesses and the shoppers who patronise the centre. The science is knowing how you are going to respond to a multitude of different situations.
At the Douglas Village shopping centre to the south of Cork, the management team has shown how video surveillance is an invaluable tool for a range of situations. In the past few years since first installing the IP video platform, they have used it to manage the site during a 100 million development programme which has seen it grow from 90,000 square feet to 250,000 square feet (23,500 sq metres).
Video surveillance was particularly invaluable for ensuring that building contractors complied with health and safety rules and in managing the flow of vehicles and people in and out of the site while tenant businesses continued to trade.
Crime is clearly an issue for any retail environment, but if that were the only purpose for video surveillance at Douglas Village, there would not be enough incidents to justify the expense of installing 180 IP cameras from Axis, a state-of-the-art control room and a top-of-the-line recording and video management system driven by Milestone XProtect software.
As the building project drew to a close, the system was adapted to help manage the flow of traffic into and around the centre. The cameras are also used to manage the internal functioning of the building, including watching the loading bays, keeping emergency exits clear and ensuring public areas are kept clean and tidy.
The manager of the centre is Bartosz Mieszala, who explains that they begin monitoring guests even before they get into the centre.
"It all begins with traffic management because that’s how they come into the centre," he says. "Nearly everyone drives, and we use the cameras to ensure that traffic coming into the centre is flowing well and that there arent any jams on the roads outside."
During the rebuilding of the centre it was necessary to make changes to a major junction just outside the centre. People in the area needed to be reassured that the changes would improve traffic flow in the way that was being promised. With the cameras, the centre management watched and recorded video of the junction before, during and after the changes and were able to prove that the new traffic system had improved the movement of vehicles in the area.
Parking is a major headache anywhere you go, but here they have adopted a few innovations to ease the situation. The centre employs a car parking guidance system which automatically detects empty spaces and shows drivers where to find them with colour coded lights. "You don’t have to wait here looking for a car parking space," Mieszala says.
If you provide free car parking, it’s an open invitation for people to abuse it, particularly for people who work in nearby offices and shops who might occupy a valuable space for most of the day. Many shopping centres get around this problem by charging people a nominal fee to park for the first two or three hours but after that upping the rate by a factor of five or ten to penalise the longer term parkers.
However, the owners of Douglas Village were determined to give people free parking to encourage more visitors to the centre. Using an automated number plate recognition (ANPR) system linked to the Milestone video platform and car parking management systems, they can allow people to park for up to three hours free of charge.
Drivers don’t have to collect a ticket on their way in and don’t have to stop for barriers on the way out, but the system is recording their registration numbers in both directions. Most people will never even be aware of the system, but if they stay more than three hours, a member of staff will leave a blue notice on their car to remind them of the limit, and repeat offenders could have their vehicles clamped.
Eye for detail: Centre manager Bartosz Mieszala
Once inside the centre, visitors are under constant video surveillance, but again you wouldn’t really be aware of it unless there was a problem.Mostly the cameras are there to protect shoppers and assist the team in running the centre. The video might be used for something as simple as ensuring the travelator from the car park to the ground floor is running properly. "If it stops working, people can’t get the trolleys down because they’re designed to keep them from rolling down," he says. "So if it stops we have to get to it very quickly."
As important as this may be, managing the site with his 17 staff – 12 full-time and five part-time - is the main advantage of the system. "In current days, it’s about time management and getting the most out of your staff," Mieszala says. "If we didn’t have CCTV, they would have to spend most of the day walking around the site and they still wouldn’t see everything."
Now staff in the control room - located adjacent to the car park - use the Axis cameras to patrol the entire centre every 30 minutes. "We have an electronic checklist that works through the Milestone XProtect software," says Mieszala, "which makes sure that we are doing a regular check on areas such as trolley bays to make sure they are cleared and aren’t blocking any exits."
Car parking is key for drivers
In fact, the video is invaluable for time management. "Looking through the images, you don’t have to go everywhere in the centre so often so you get more done in less time," he says, adding: "It’s all down to the cost management which is so important these days. We can, through the different records and the CCTV, analyse our staff rosters for the coming weeks and only schedule people for certain times."
Alan Hudson of Masterclass Security was the security integrator on the project. In his view, "There’s no way you could manage a site of this size with this number of staff without cameras… Compare this site to a shopping centre where they have no cameras – you’d have to have a security guard walking around, it would probably take him half an hour to get around the entire site, but with CCTV a guard can get around the site in five minutes. And the beauty of it is he can call the security guard to tell him exactly where to go if he’s needed."
While visiting the shopping centre, I had a chance to speak to Orla Lannin, the operations director of the Shipton Group which owns the Douglas Village shopping centre and four others around Ireland. She manages the centre managers and day-to-day operations and has found the IP video system invaluable.
The Shipton Group has made a heavy investment into video surveillance because the owner believes they can leverage greater value out of the properties and the staff through technology. In all, 400 cameras monitor the five sites in the group.
Douglas Village is not to be confused with the nearby Douglas Court centre which is also owned by the Shipton Group. Between the two sites, they have over 250 cameras installed which gives them a good overview of the centres and surrounding areas.
Lannin can monitor the centre from her office 9km away in Carrigaline. "The first thing that would come to most people’s minds when you talk about CCTV is security, but that’s not all there is. I would call it management by cameras," she says.
"I find them particularly helpful in traffic management. During the busier periods you can see at a glance what’s happening and send staff to try to alleviate a problem before it gets bigger," she says.
Having had experience managing the Douglas Court shopping centre before she became operations director, Lannin knows what it’s like to run it before and after video surveillance system was installed. "I did it for a couple of years before we got the cameras in at Douglas Court," she says, "and it was like, what was I doing for the past few years? Before we had cameras I would walk every corner of the centre, walk right round as I would do in every centre if I didn’t have CCTV… It really is one of the most important management tools that we have in the Shipton Group."
With his experience of video surveillance, what recommendations would Bartosz Mieszala make if he were talking to other shopping centre managers? "I would say realistically, make sure you have as many cameras as you possibly can. I would say this is the main thing," he says. "You can adjust them from left to right and put different presets on them but the key is your coverage, because to manage your site right, you need to know what is happening."
Camera placement is particularly important in ensuring that tenants get the service they require. "We use the CCTV all the time and it helps us reduce our costs, which in turn allows us to reduce our service rates to tenants which is very important in the current climate," he says. However, despite the best plans, it’s nearly impossible to get all the cameras in the right place so be prepared to move them around. Fortunately, Masterclass Security has been prepared to work very closely with the Douglas Centre to put the network cameras wherever they wish.
Moving network cameras around is made simpler by the IP approach and the flexibility of the Milestone XProtect software platform. Mieszala says that between the integrator and the IT consultant, Richard Cronin, a solution can usually be found to any challenge. "There are many really good things about this system, and if we meet again in six months there will be even more things because we are constantly getting new ideas and asking Masterclass Security and Richard to develop them."
Alan Hudson of Masterclass Security became involved in the redevelopment of the shopping centre during the construction phase in May 2008.
The control room is in full view of everyone who drives in
The redevelopment was conducted in four stages: building the new car parking ramp, redevelopment of the car park, completion of the upper levels of the centre and finally finishing off the interior.
"During the construction phase there were a number of Axis network cameras used for security, mainly PTZs spread around the construction site which allowed remote access for the client so he could keep an eye on what was happening," Hudson says. As work progressed, Axis 216 cameras were put into their permanent locations. As the outputs had to be recorded, the servers had to go in at the same time and these were loaded with Milestone XProtect Enterprise software.
The control room was fitted out in February 2009 and by March operators were monitoring the centre from PCs running the XProtect Smart Client software.
To cover entrances from the car park to the centre, they installed Axis 216MFD megapixel cameras and in the car park itself they installed a mixture of Axis 233 PTZs and Axis 216Ds. "Initially we had a few blind spots that weren’t covered by cameras but as the system grew, we located the blind spots and added more cameras," says Hudson.
Hudson is enthusiastic about the Milestone software which has enabled him to integrate other elements of the security and safety systems into the CCTV system including access control and intruder alarms. Automated scripts ensure that when an alert is triggered, a nearby camera will pivot and record the area around the alarm point.
Another element of the system is people counting. "We tested a number of systems and found the AVD people counting system, which sits on the Axis 209 camera, was the most accurate at 95% or better," he says. The system is tested monthly by doing a manual count to verify the accuracy of the automated system. Richard Cronin is the IT consultant for the Shipton Group. Cronin had previously worked on the Douglas Court site where they had evaluated numerous IP cameras and found the Axis units to be the best quality and simplest to deploy. Milestone XProtect software was chosen for the openness of the architecture which enables Cronin to write special applications for the centre. During the construction phase, 12 Axis PTZs were installed around the site with Cisco wireless bridges to bring the signals back to a small server. "We could see from here and at head office what time the construction workers were coming on site, what time they were finishing. Were they keeping the site clean, was traffic flowing OK and were doors being kept secure?" says Cronin. Four more Axis PTZ cameras were installed atop poles in a temporary car park a half mile from the centre and linked back to the centre via wireless bridges.
"As construction progressed, we were able to move the cameras around," he says. "The most interesting camera we had on site was on top of a mast 100 yards in the air looking down on the site." All the cameras are linked to Allied Telesys POE switches which are dotted around the site to ensure no camera is more than 90 metres from a switch. The switches are connected to the IT room via multimode fibre optic cable.
Three 2950 Dell servers run the XProtect Enterprise software which manages the 180 cameras and provides live viewing and recording of the video. Two 1950 Dell servers cover ANPR, people counting and the car park management system.
In the control room, two 70-inch Eyevis rear projection cube monitors face an operator’s desk with two workstations of three screens each. A supervisor’s station sits to one side, running the same workstation configuration. Workstations are also located in the site manager’s office and the information desk in the main concourse.
The Douglas Village shopping centre is an example of what can be achieved with the right mix of technology and management best practice. The investment that the Shipton Group has made in IP video has enabled this shopping centre to cut its costs and improve the quality of its services to shoppers and tenants, and on the basis of that you can safely expect more shopping centres in Ireland and elsewhere to follow suit.