Transmission Solution For IHMC Traffic Monitoring CCTV Cameras

A part of Cambridgeshire County Council's Highways Service, the Integrated Highways Management Centre (IHMC) is based in Vantage House, Huntingdon and acts as a front-line communication tool that actively monitors Cambridgeshire's highway network for congestion that can be caused by road works, incidents, accidents, events or weather so that the team can warn or advise motorists, partners and stakeholders of these disruptions.

The IHMC has many tools at its disposal for network monitoring and then disseminating the information accordingly. These tools include a non-recording CCTV camera network for traffic monitoring that currently comprises of 23 locations across the county. These cameras are mounted to lighting columns or traffic signals, drawing power from directly from them.

The IHMC is staffed Monday to Friday, 7am to 7pm so is not a 24/7 CCTV control room.

In the past this network was hosted externally, but due to prohibitive costings and other mitigating factors, a new solution needs to be sourced.

We require a solution comprising of 4G transmission units at each camera site which can send the camera data to a secure cloud host so that the images can be viewed securely both on the IHMC monitor wall and also on laptops connected to the internet.

These units will need to be powered via an RJ45 Ethernet connector from the camera unit.

The current system allows images at 5 frames per second to cut down on bandwidth usage so any improvement would be a benefit.

We would require the successful contractor to use the Vodafone IoT network with Vodafone M2M SIM cards as Vodafone are the current corporate mobile transmission provider. We would also require a subscription package of no longer than 3 years for the initial term.

We are expanding the network by 2 camera units (separate to this tender process), so the initial network will be 25 cameras, with scope to easily and cost effectively expand the network at a later stage.

We would ideally require the transmission equipment to be lightweight and easily transferable to enable a semi re-deployable network of traffic monitoring cameras.