Smart Space Planning

“Our existing security camera solution wasn’t evolving like other camera systems on the market and was holding us back from implementing new ways to support our 1.4 million square feet of office space, laboratories and manufacturing facilities more effectively,” says Brooks Cucuel, Senior Director of Security for AstraZeneca’s Gaithersburg facility. 

The intuitive nature of AXIS Camera Station has made the transition easy. “Not only do the operators in the Command Center find the interface easy to use, now we have access to a lot of functionality and analytics that we didn’t have before,” explains Cucuel. 

On the garage’s rooftop, Axis cameras give security a clear view of the adjacent surface lot as well as the roadway that circles the campus. Security also programmed motion detection triggers in AXIS Camera Station to alert the Command Center of activity in the garage area at night when fewer security staff are on patrol. “That’s played a huge part in initiating staff response to an event a lot earlier,” shares Lee. He adds that Axis intercoms were also installed to help facilitate direct communication between security staff in the garage and Command Center. 

“We use a ton of these cameras,” states Lee. “The cool thing about them is that you can adjust their angles to catch two hallways that converge on each other or monitor four-way hallway intersections.” The cameras are also being deployed in the middle of long corridors to monitor both ends from a single IP address, a significant savings over the multi-camera set up required with their previous camera system. 

Lee finds that AXIS Camera Station makes it easy to set up privileged access so that teams can only view the cameras that cover their area of responsibility. While security views the cameras with an eye towards general safety and security, other specialty teams might be monitoring for different operational concerns. For instance, the team in charge of the Pilot Facility, a small manufacturing suite, could be checking quality control processes. Another team might be monitoring lab corridors to see that airlocks to clean rooms are kept closed. An R&D team might be checking that quarantine protocols are being followed in the cell therapy lab, and so forth.  

“We’ve also experimented with using AXIS 3D People Counter for emergency evacuation accountability,” shares Lee. Choosing a building that already uses turnstile lanes for positive entry control, the security team put the analytic enhanced cameras over all the entry/exit points, including the turnstiles, emergency exits and visitor’s entrance, and tied them together to aggregate a full count of people coming in and going out of the building. 

One specific use case for Axis analytics was to track pedestrian traffic at certain entryways from a hilltop garage. Most people tend to exit the garage on level three where there’s a crosswalk into the building. But people who work at the ground level loading docks or in the basement might opt for the convenience of exiting on the ground level and dashing across the busy roadway where there’s no safe crosswalk.

“It’s a very specific use case,” states Lee. “It’s something we could have never done with our old camera system. Once we evaluate the data we’re collecting, it’ll help us make an informed decision on whether to pursue the project.”

In addition to having easy access to the Axis Experience Center showroom in Washington D.C. to learn of new products that might be coming out, Lee’s team is often asked to provide feedback on products they’ve tested. “It’s been a huge help to have an open dialog with the local Axis team as well as the technical team in Lund, Axis’ international headquarters in Sweden,” shares Lee. “We’ve been able to take a deep dive into questions about analytics, how we use our cameras, even what can be reconfigured on the development side to best address our business needs.”