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Case file
IP video surveillance — Hikvision, Dahua, Axis, Bosch — designed to coverage, recording-bandwidth and retention specifications, with VMS and AI-analytics overlays.
/ Hover any camera
Specs and retention shown here.
Reference Compound · Demonstration
CCTV camera coverage on the reference compound
- C-01 Perimeter NW: 8 MP · 4 mm · IR 60 m, retention 60 days.
- C-02 Perimeter NE: 8 MP · 4 mm · IR 60 m, retention 60 days.
- C-11 Perimeter SW: 8 MP · 4 mm · IR 60 m, retention 60 days.
- C-12 Perimeter SE: 8 MP · 4 mm · IR 60 m, retention 60 days.
- C-03 Front Roof PTZ: 32× zoom · auto-track, retention 60 days.
- C-10 Rear Roof PTZ: 25× zoom · auto-track, retention 60 days.
- C-04 Main Gate ANPR: ANPR · plate-read · 1080p, retention 90 days.
- C-05 Porte-cochère Dome: 5 MP · 1.4 mm · 360°, retention 30 days.
- C-06 Pool Dome: 5 MP · 1.4 mm · 360°, retention 30 days.
- C-07 West Side: 4 MP · 6 mm · IR 40 m, retention 30 days.
- C-08 East Side: 4 MP · 6 mm · IR 40 m, retention 30 days.
- C-09 Thermal Loop: 640 × 480 · 25 mm, retention 60 days.
/ The discipline, in detail
How we approach cctv & surveillance.
We design CCTV from the property line inward. Camera selection — bullet, dome, PTZ, multi-sensor, thermal — is matched to the actual focal task: face capture at 1m/px or scene-overview at 4m/px, never blanket coverage. Storage is sized for actual retention (30 / 60 / 90 days) at the recorded bitrate, not the panel sticker. AI analytics — line-cross, intrusion, loitering, ANPR, face-search — sit on a VMS that the security team can actually use.
On record
Every cctv & surveillance engagement is documented end-to-end — design, programming, commissioning, calibration — and handed over with the files our successors would need if we were never to return.
/ Three lenses on the same system
Read it the way you actually need it.
Three short readings of cctv & surveillance — for a non-engineer who needs the picture, an engineer who needs the spec, and a buyer who needs to see the system in operation.
/ In simple terms
CCTV surveillance is the visual record of what happens in and around a building. Modern systems use IP cameras over the same network that runs the office, with the recordings stored centrally and accessible through a video-management dashboard. The good systems integrate with fire alarm and access control so that a security event automatically pulls up the relevant camera.
/ Technical explanation
An IP CCTV system runs 4MP–8MP cameras over Cat6A with PoE/PoE+, recording to RAID-10/RAID-6 storage sized by retention × bitrate × camera count. The VMS exposes role-based workstation and mobile clients, with optional analytics tiers for line-crossing, intrusion, loitering, ANPR and face-matching. Network segmentation, access-control event linking and fire-alarm pre-record are the integration boundaries; per-zone retention is the storage-sizing discipline.
/ Real project usage
On the Tinsukia Medical College & Hospital deployment, the IP CCTV layer was engineered with patient privacy enforced at the camera-placement drawing, retention sized at 90 days for clinical zones and 180 days for pharmacy and drug stores, cabling routed against the hospital's infection-control annotation, and analytics rules reviewed by clinical engineering before commissioning. The system has been operating under our active AMC for over a year, with the clinical-engineering team operating the VMS independently of our intervention.
/ System architecture
The layers, named.
Every layer below is engineered as one piece of the integrated stack. Each carries its own commissioning artefact and its own AMC inclusion.
- 01
IP cameras (4MP–8MP, fixed/varifocal/PTZ/panoramic) connected over Cat6A structured cabling with PoE/PoE+ injection at the network switch.
- 02
Access switches sized with PoE budget for the camera count plus 25% headroom for future device additions; aggregation switch in the network closet; core switch in the main equipment room.
- 03
Video Management System (VMS) on a redundant server cluster, with the recording layer on RAID-10 or RAID-6 storage sized by the formula retention × bitrate × camera count, with 1.2× redundancy.
- 04
Workstation interfaces in the security control room and at nominated operations desks; mobile-app clients for nominated security supervisors with role-based access.
- 05
Optional analytics tier — line-crossing, intrusion, loitering, license-plate recognition, face matching — running on the VMS server or on edge-compute cameras, configured per-camera against the operations team's actual rules.
/ Design considerations
The decisions we take early.
- Camera count and placement is engineered against a coverage map drawn on the architect's floor plan, with every entry, exit, lift lobby, corridor junction, perimeter line and high-value zone marked. Camera type (fixed, varifocal, PTZ, panoramic) is assigned per-zone against the field-of-view that zone needs.
- Bitrate is sized against the camera's actual encoder behaviour during high-motion scenes, not the procurement-stage assumed bitrate. A 4MP camera on a busy lobby can burst to 6 Mbps; sizing on 2 Mbps produces storage that runs out at 18 days when the spec said 30.
- Retention is zone-specific — 30 days for admin, 60 days for hospitality, 90 days for healthcare and government, 180 days where regulated (banks, ATMs, drug stores, blood-bank cold-chain, controlled-substance audit zones).
- Network segmentation — CCTV runs on its own VLAN, with ACLs limiting access to the VMS server and authorised workstations only. CCTV traffic does not share VLAN with general office network or building automation.
- Privacy zoning is the first design decision in any healthcare, education or residential brief. Cameras are physically excluded from privacy zones at the camera-placement drawing, with hardware shutters where firmware-only privacy masks would be insufficient.
/ Integration logic
How it talks to the rest.
- Fire-alarm pre-record — on a fire-alarm trigger, the VMS pre-records the cameras on the affected zone for 60 seconds before alarm and 60 seconds after, so forensic reconstruction has the full event captured.
- Access-control event linking — every door event (granted, denied, forced, held-open) is timestamp-linked to the camera covering the door, so the VMS can replay the door event with synchronised video.
- Analytics-rule-driven alerts — the VMS surfaces analytics events to the operations team's dashboard, with the rule logic configured per-camera and reviewed by the operations team.
- BMS interlock — for high-security or high-criticality zones, the BMS exposes occupancy and HVAC state to the VMS so the operations team can correlate environmental events (HVAC anomaly) with security events.
/ Failure scenarios
What goes wrong, in practice.
- Storage under-sized — sized against the procurement-stage bitrate without accounting for actual encoder behaviour in high-motion scenes. Storage runs out at 18 days when the spec said 30. Mitigated by per-camera bitrate sizing with motion-burst headroom and storage-consumption monitoring at week 4 of operation.
- Camera firmware drift — over 2–3 years, camera firmware updates accumulate and the camera estate runs heterogeneous firmware versions. Mitigated by quarterly firmware-update calendar managed by the AMC.
- PoE budget exhaustion — when devices are added without re-checking the switch's PoE budget, new cameras fail to power. Mitigated by a PoE-budget calculation on every device addition.
- Analytics misfire — generic analytics rules pushed across the camera estate without per-camera tuning. The operations team disables the analytics, at which point the analytics tier is wasted spend. Mitigated by per-camera rule scripting with operations-team review.
- Storage controller failure with insufficient redundancy — RAID controller failure that brings down the recording layer. Mitigated by RAID-10 or RAID-6 with hot-spare and per-camera independent backup to a secondary recorder for high-criticality zones.
/ Maintenance expectations
What the AMC actually delivers.
- Monthly storage-consumption check against the model — actual GB-per-day per camera versus modelled, with deviation reported and re-investigated.
- Quarterly camera firmware update calendar — every camera updated to the manufacturer's current stable firmware, with test reboot on a sub-set before full estate rollout.
- Annual lens and housing cleaning — every camera's lens and housing cleaned, with the cleaning visit logged and any housing degradation flagged for replacement.
- VMS database integrity check on a published calendar; configuration baseline stored offline.
- Quarterly analytics-rule review with the operations team, with rules added, removed or tuned per the meeting.
/ Where we deploy this
Active across 6 sectors.
CCTV & Surveillance is rarely a standalone brief — it sits inside a wider sector practice with its own codes, expectations and operating rhythm.
/ Sister services
The rest of elv.
A serious brief usually crosses two or three of these. Read across the discipline — we deliver them as one contract.
- 01
Professional Audio & PA Systems
Intelligible, every seat in the house.
Public address, voice-evacuation and concert-grade audio for auditoriums, places of worship, stadia, transit hubs and event venues.0 - 03
Access Control
Right person. Right door. Right time.
Card, biometric, mobile-credential and visitor-management — Honeywell, HID, Matrix and Suprema — integrated with CCTV, intrusion and HR systems.1 - 04
Fire Alarm System
Detection that pinpoints. Response that is coordinated.
Addressable fire detection and alarm — Honeywell, Bosch, Notifier and Siemens panels — integrated with PA, BMS, access control and emergency lighting per NBC, IS 2189 and NFPA 72.2 - 05
Fire Hydrant System
High-volume water, precisely where it's needed.
Wet- and dry-riser hydrant systems, jockey-and-main pump rooms, yard hydrants and four-way fire-brigade inlets — designed to NBC, IS 13039 and NFPA 14.3 - 06
X-Ray Baggage Scanners
Operator confidence, in seconds.
Dual-energy X-ray baggage and parcel scanners for airports, hotels, government buildings, courts, malls and corporate lobbies.4 - 07
Under Vehicle Surveillance (UVSS)
Full-chassis scan, the moment a vehicle arrives.
Embedded high-resolution UVSS with ANPR and driver-occupant cameras — a critical first line of defence at every vehicle entry point.5 - 08
Door-Frame Metal Detectors
Quick, unobtrusive, accurate.
Multi-zone DFMDs with adjustable sensitivity, pinpoint LED indicators and networked logging — for hotels, courts, places of worship, malls and government buildings.6 - 09
Boom Barriers & Motorised Gates
Controlled flow, every gate.
Boom barriers, sliding and swing gates, road blockers, bollards and turnstiles — integrated with ANPR, RFID and access control.7 - 10
Nurse Calling System
Patient request to nurse response. Documented.
IP-based nurse call systems with bedside, bathroom, code-blue and staff-presence stations, integrated with mobile and PA.8
/ Where this system has been deployed
CCTV & Surveillance on the ground.
The reference projects below carry a cctv & surveillance layer engineered as part of an integrated stack. Each case study walks through the engineering challenges that were solved, the standards the work was held to, and the operational outcome on the day-two team.
- Completed · Handover 2017
Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly
Government · Legislative Chamber · Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh
- Completed · Handover 2024
Tinsukia Medical College & Hospital
Healthcare · Government · Tinsukia, Assam
- Completed · Handover 2022
Agartala Medical College
Healthcare · Government · Agartala, Tripura
- Completed · Handover 2025
Taraghar — State Guest House
Government · State Guest House · Shillong, Meghalaya
/ Integration with
How cctv & surveillance talks to the rest.
A serious deployment of this system rarely operates in isolation. The disciplines below most commonly share its cabling pathways, its controller logic, and its cause-and-effect matrix.
Access Control
Right person. Right door. Right time.
Card, biometric, mobile-credential and visitor-management — Honeywell, HID, Matrix and Suprema — integrated with CCTV, intrusion and HR systems.Fire Alarm System
Detection that pinpoints. Response that is coordinated.
Addressable fire detection and alarm — Honeywell, Bosch, Notifier and Siemens panels — integrated with PA, BMS, access control and emergency lighting per NBC, IS 2189 and NFPA 72.Structured Cabling
Backbones rated for the next quarter-century.
Cat6A, OS2 and OM4/OM5 structured cabling — designed to TIA-568, terminated to manufacturer warranty and labelled to a documented patch schedule.Network Security
Segmentation. Visibility. Recoverable backups.
Next-generation firewalls, segmentation, NAC, EDR, SIEM and backup — Fortinet, Palo Alto, Sophos, Check Point — designed to how breaches actually unfold, not how vendors describe them.
/ Read deeper
The engineering, in long form.
Each article below goes deeper than this service page can — a full walk-through of the engineering decisions, written by the team that delivers this work.
- ELV · 12 min
CCTV design for hospitals: privacy zoning, retention windows and the camera count nobody calculates
Hospital surveillance is not a commercial brief with a medical sticker. Patient privacy, infection-control zoning, NABH audit retention and clinical-engineering veto rights mean the camera plan, the storage sizing and the analytics rules all read differently. The design discipline we have built around it.
Read article - ELV · 11 min
Eight ELV integration mistakes that survive into commissioning — and how to catch them earlier
ELV integration faults rarely surface in design review or installation — they survive into commissioning because the seam-level coordination is nobody's contractual responsibility. The eight failure modes we see most often, and the design-stage discipline that catches each one before it becomes a snag list at handover.
Read article
/ Frequently asked
CCTV & Surveillance — what buyers ask first.
How many CCTV cameras do I need for my home?
A 5,000 sq ft villa typically needs 12–18 cameras across perimeter, entry, driveway and common areas, sized from a coverage map issued with every quote. We typically specify 12–18 cameras: 4 perimeter, 4 entry, 2–3 driveway/garage, 2 main entry/lobby, plus interior coverage on common areas. The number is far less interesting than the coverage map — we deliver one with every quote.
Cloud recording or local NVR?
Choose hybrid for premium homes — local NVR with 60-day retention plus cloud backup of high-importance event clips; pure cloud is rarely the right answer above 8 cameras. Hybrid for premium homes — local NVR with 60-day retention plus cloud backup of high-importance event clips. Pure cloud is bandwidth-expensive at 24/7/HD and is rarely the right answer for properties with more than 8 cameras.
What's the cost of a 16-camera CCTV system in India?
A 16-camera CCTV system in India costs around ₹2.4 lakh installed for a Hikvision 4MP deployment, rising to ₹6 lakh for Axis or Bosch with analytics. A 16-channel Hikvision deployment with 4MP cameras, 60-day NVR storage, PoE switch, UPS backup and remote-app access begins around ₹2.4 lakh installed. Axis or Bosch deployments at the same channel count begin around ₹6 lakh and rise with analytics and integration scope.
How long should CCTV footage be retained?
30 days for most commercial buildings, 60 days for hospitality, 90 days for healthcare and government, 180 days where regulated (banks, ATMs, certain critical infrastructure). Storage is sized by retention × bitrate × camera count; we provide the calculation in writing before quoting.
Hikvision, Bosch, Axis or Honeywell — which IP CCTV?
Hikvision is the broad-coverage standard at value pricing — our default for general commercial and residential. Bosch and Axis are the premium tier — better low-light performance, more analytics, longer mean-time-between-failures. Honeywell suits regulated environments with single-vendor preference. We deploy by project requirement, not by partnership volume.
Do we need video analytics on every camera?
No — analytics is a per-camera feature you specify where it earns its cost. Line-crossing and intrusion analytics on perimeter cameras: yes, almost always. Facial recognition on lobby cameras: only where the privacy framework supports it. Object-classification on retail cameras: yes for loss-prevention. Most cameras don't need analytics; only edge cases do.
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