Lakeland Christian Academy is a small but highly esteemed private school for 7th-12th grade located in Winona Lake, Indiana. The Academy was founded in 1974 and has been in its current building since 2004. Recent school safety and security initiatives pushed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security prompted the school to implement a number of security measures, one of which included adding a video security system to their campus.
Enter Nexus Technology Partners. Using a proprietary mobile security camera system mockup tool developed in-house, Nexus determined strategic positions for each camera the school would need to provide full surveillance of the interior and exterior of the school’s facility. As the Nexus design team moved through the school, they determined the best position for each camera to provide the best surveillance vantage points. Additionally, Nexus captured images from each camera location using the actual security camera that would be used in the finished system. In doing so, Nexus was able to provide a full simulation of the camera system to the school’s decision-makers before a single cable was run or the first camera was mounted.
Unlike its competitors who often simply show you where the camera will be mounted in their proposals, Nexus can show you what you will see when the system goes live. This enabled the school to reposition a camera here, strike a camera there, or add additional cameras before the project even started. The result was a camera system that could see everything they wanted to see right from the start. No going back to cover areas overlooked in the initial design.
As the preparations for the project continued, principal consulting technician Mark Stevens looked beyond the system he had been commissioned to design and consider the technical environment in which the new system would operate. It became clear that the existing network infrastructure was already overloaded and would not have the additional capacity to handle the data traffic created by the new security cameras. Rather than take the easy way out by adding a minimal amount of equipment to handle the new requirements, Mark future-proofed the network infrastructure by carefully selecting and sizing new equipment and strategically positioning new equipment throughout the facility in a way that would leverage the buildout beyond what was originally imagined. This enabled the school to update its existing data network for minimal additional cost.
After the design was approved, Nexus technicians installed 59 cameras in strategic locations within the halls and the exterior of the building, added 5 managed power-over-Ethernet switches, installed nearly 1000 feet of 10 gigabit/second armored fiber-optic cable, and over 10,000 feet of CAT 6 Ethernet cable in less than 20 days. The project included the installation and configuration of a high-end network video recorder, a distributed battery backup system, a centralized network management application, and a high-capacity firewall and router.
When completed, the school not only received a security camera system with the capabilities and features they needed, but they also received the peace of mind that the system Nexus had built for them would carry them well into the future. Careful consideration of the big picture enabled Nexus to provide more value for Lakeland's resources than expected.
Nexus continues to provide technical support for the school’s security system and network infrastructure. So, when an errantly launched basketball accidentally adjusts a camera angle, or a sub-system needs software updates, Nexus provides ongoing support to keep them up-to-date and safe and sound.
Security camera views from Lakeland Christian Academy