Scottish Government

Background

The Scottish Government is situated across multiple sites throughout Scotland, from the borders to the very north of the country, including the Scottish Islands.

Sites compose of data centres, secure communications, secure buildings, government agencies and parliamentary offices, many under high security protocol, so A Plus Security staff had to undergo extensive security screening to be able to undertake these works.

The project involved an integrated installation across all sites, and following an extensive tender process, A Plus Security worked closely and collaboratively with the Government’s project team to put the right systems into place.

Challenges

The main challenges faced were around continuity and high security, as each area was not freely accessible for long, so A Plus security teams worked out of hours and at weekends to ensure that the installations were completed without affecting continuity of business.

The access control solution was an upgrade from the legacy system, rather than being a fresh installation, and some of the areas where access control was installed were in very high security areas, so we had to provide on-point programmes of work and ensure timescales were kept to, to avoid causing a security breach.

The estate-wide access control and level of high security access needed constant liaison with senior management at each location as well as with the Government networks team, which took a lot of pre-planning.

As an additional element to the project, we had to assist in collating personal data from 25,000 users and setup the database so that, once installed, business continuity was not affected.

Solutions

Using previous experience gained through working with Police Constabularies and other Government bodies to achieve similar projects, we knew that the impetus needed to be on A Plus Security to establish and manage the planning process and implementation schedule.

Extensive build-up and pre-planning work went into the pre-roll out phase of the project, after which constant dialogue with the project team and senior management took over, with comprehensive project plans and weekly project meetings.

Working so closely with the Government networks team, and working to the same vital works schedule, meant that VLAN had been set up for us in advance and network switches allocated for us, so the installation of the CCTV in restricted access communications rooms and centres was quite seamless.

The emphasis on the pre-planning and planning stages meant that the project went seamlessly from start to finish.

Installed systems

Access Control – Keri System (with a bespoke software element) and Avigilon for CCTV.

Training

For this particular application there were bespoke elements of the access control system that were specifically developed for the Scottish Government, so our team required training to be able to service the system – plus we provided comprehensive training to the client which is still on going to this day.