A New Perspective on Security

On behalf of the Estates Team, IS have recently upgraded the University’s security incident management system, Perspective. Working with the Estates Team and implementing lessons learned from the last upgrade the project was delivered smoothly, on time and under budget.

This project illustrates both the breadth of work performed by IS and the importance of good project management methodology, particularly recording and implementing lessons learned. This work was greatly assisted by key members of the Security Team and gratitude is expressed to Alistair Campbell and Frank Henzell both of whom have a deep understanding of the system and its applications.

Perspective is a security incident management system that allows the Security Team to record, track, and update the progress of ongoing incidents in real time. Essential information relating incidents can be recorded, including involved people, vehicles, and items. Evidence such as photographs and CCTV excerpts can be uploaded to the database and associated with incidents and a full report can be extracted in an event that emergency services need to be involved.

The analytics capability of this system allows the Security Team to review incidents and activities proactively across all of the University Estate. Utilising this, Security and the Sustainability Office developed an energy saving initiative where the system automatically sent reports to the managers of buildings where lights were being left on overnight – for this work, the Security Team received a Special Award from Sustainability.

The Perspective system is supplied by a company based in Canada and the time difference posed an additional challenge for the project team. For various reasons the previous upgrade had proved to be significantly more challenging than first anticipated. However, the Project Manager from this earlier upgrade took the time to document the lessons to be learned, making several recommendations for future upgrades. These lessons to be learned were an important starting point for the new Project Manager. Implementing these with the cross-functional teams (Estates and IS who also shared a common project objective) proved to be invaluable, leading to smooth upgrade of the system.