Work Hard Play Hard
Albuquerque hotel, casino upgrades surveillance system to provide best customer experience
- By Todd Flowers
- Sep 01, 2012
Whether you’re visiting for a weekend getaway or a business
conference, a meeting or a round of golf, the four-star,
family-friendly Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Albuquerque is
dedicated to offering its guests a pleasant stay with amenities
that include a full-service spa. The security for the
property and guests is also full-service.
One of the most secure properties in the city, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino
Albuquerque decided earlier this year to further enhance the protection offered
by upgrading its security video surveillance system. The facility started by seeking
advice and estimates for the job.
“We decided that improved security will be welcomed by our guests and improve
our efficiency,” said Michelle Barrwick, surveillance director at the facility.
“One of our goals included reusing any legacy system components or products,
something we knew would be a challenge for the winning bidder. The upgrade is
something we wanted to do right away, fully installed and executed by the end of
the 2012 calendar year.”
Getting the Upgrades
Upgrading the system to include new, IP-based, high-definition video surveillance
cameras and other equipment required an integrator that understood how to design
and execute a hybrid system. After a competitive bidding round, the Hard
Rock site selected Surveillance Systems Integration (SSI) as the preferred project
leader for the migration and upgrade for the property.
SSI is headquartered in Roseville, Calif., and recently announced expansion
plans, opening new offices this year in Tulsa and Seattle, as part of its growth
strategy eyeing a bigger piece of the casino, retail and commercial markets. Specializing
in retrofitting and upgrading existing systems to include the latest in security
video surveillance technology, the project at Hard Rock Albuquerque was a
perfect match of ability to need.
After receiving notice that SSI was selected for the project, a team was immediately
commissioned to evaluate the state of the systems to plan and procure
the parts that would be necessary to improve the legacy surveillance system. To
meet the needs and solve the challenges presented by the hotel and casino, the team decided to feature Avigilon’s end-to-end solution. Avigilon designs and
manufactures high-definition surveillance
solutions. The hardware and software
work together in a new system or
they can work with existing systems to
enhance the current capabilities, making
it possible to create a customized
and scalable surveillance system. The
planned system at Hard Rock represents
Avigilon’s largest casino installation
upgrade in the United States.
“We chose to use Avigilon’s end-toend
solution for Hard Rock Hotel and
Casino because it is easy to combine
with legacy systems,” said Al Croteau,
business development manager at SSI.
“Also, it helps enhance the existing system
to capture footage in high definition,
the best image clarity the industry
offers, to provide the best evidence possible.
This system also offers advanced
network video management software,
allowing the client to manage the system
from workstations that work together.
The project requires us to work
closely with the surveillance team at the
casino and with Avigilon to choose the
right products to mix and match with
the high-quality existing resources the
property already had.”
The Hard Rock project will include
an update from analog to HD cameras,
additional video encoders to enhance
existing equipment, and multiple workstations
and servers on a large scale, upgrading
the quality and ability to identify
threats in real-time while recording
continuously. The system will use the
Avigilon Control Center, featuring network
video management software with
high-definition stream management
(HDSM) technology. The control center
effectively captures, manages and
stores high-definition multi-megapixel
surveillance video while efficiently
managing bandwidth and storage.
The software also records and manages
both audio and video from the
installed multi-megapixel IP cameras,
easily accommodating conventional
and PTZ analog cameras, as well as
both audio and video from a broad variety
of third-party IP cameras and encoders
from other manufacturers. The
control center allows a hybrid system
for a budget-conscious migration from
analog to digital, which is just what the
client had requested.
Supporting the Plan
The system at the hotel and casino
was also designed to support Avigilon
NVRs to store up to 30 days of continuous
surveillance footage. The video
recorders offer the site several distinct
benefits: a plug-and-play network video
recording solution for managing multimegapixel
IP cameras and analog cameras,
scalable recording that can record
footage from up to 96 cameras on a
single HD NVR, a unique workstation
configuration that allows standalone
viewing and recording from one
machine for simple deployment in an
installed system, and a server configuration
in a standard rack-mount enclosure
with enterprise-class hardware to
ensure maximum reliability.
With the control center and NVR
solution, managing the system from
the site’s workstations would be simple
and efficient. Additionally, the system
uses Winsted Console Systems (Sightline),
18 LCD monitors varying in size
from 24 inches to 46 inches, a combination
of Cisco Network Switches and
Vigitron IP over coaxial devices and
West Penn Fiber from the IDF rooms
to the head end, and wire for the system wiring. The Winstead Console and
LCD monitors are part of a completely
new monitor room designed especially
for the Hard Rock. One of the most
important elements of the migration
was that the system was designed and
planned so there will be zero downtime
during the cutover from the existing
system to the new solution.
“With a solution in place to meet the
customer’s needs, we could then address
one of the other concerns mentioned
by the hotel and casino—they wanted
to be more sustainable,” Croteau said.
“As we reviewed the power requirements
for the new system upgrade, we
found that by switching to the Avigilon
end-to-end solution, we would provide
them with not only a high-image quality
but one that would actually reduce
the annual power consumed by the security
surveillance system.
“Our team of SSI engineers and
system designers were able to cut up to
70 percent of the annual power usage
by the system while also providing recommendations
that would increase the
security and operations efficiency for
Hard Rock.”
After coming up with upgrade suggestions
and plans to not only meet
but exceed the expectations of the client,
SSI shared them with the customer
for review.
Staying on Budget
“We were thrilled to see the plans that
included state-of-the-art equipment for
no more than our requested budget restriction,
but we were even more excited
when we learned that the new system
upgrades would allow us to save up to
70 percent of the power the video surveillance
system had used in the past,”
Barrwick said. “To us, this exceeded
our expectations, especially since we
had added so many high-definition, IPbased
cameras, as we believed that the
newer technology would take more energy
to operate. SSI’s choices were a great
match to what we had envisioned when
we embarked on the bidding process.”
“Being an end-to-end solution provider
that is capable of managing the
project from the design phase to execution,
SSI is able to line up the schedule
to meet our clients’ needs, even in their
schedule requests. Because we oversee
the entire process, we are able to provide
a seamless project that minimizes downtime
for the customer,” Croteau said.
Training is critical, and employee
familiarity with the new system is expected
to be minimal. But with powerful
solutions such as HD recording
and playback timelines, the capability
to bookmark and export HD surveillance
footage, detailed management,
monitoring and reporting of system
status and security lets administrators
and operators map any camera or system
event to an action for faster identification
of threats or incidents and
improved response times.
“We anticipate minimized installation
costs and training costs—
the pleasant surprises
keep coming from
SSI,” Barwick said.
This article originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of Security Today.