Founded in 2015 and privately owned, substantial multi-level challenges were faced by management to secure the 41 acre site located in the heart of Western Sydney parklands, housing more than 1000 animals and accommodating 800,000 visitors annually.
From day one, Sydney Zoo CEO, Jake Burgess and his team were determined to embrace leading edge technology and innovation to improve security, safety and animal welfare, while maintaining a positive customer experience.
Original thought out security plans revolved around three permanently employed security guards for 12 hours each night, with one guard monitoring onsite CCTV cameras and the other two guards roaming throughout the site and along the perimeter fence. However, this was expensive and imperfect, and the search was on for a world-leading alternative security solution.
Working to a strict timeline with constantly evolving design and changes which were further complicated by multiple contractor involvement, our challenge was to integrate the multiple diverse security systems and networks to successfully combine them into a top level incident and event detection system, ensuring a fast response and secure outcome.
‘This was a high risk commercial venture’ said Mr Burgess, ‘and we were seeking to identify the latest available technologies to provide the very best security outcome along with lowest possible ongoing costs. This is when RealGuard came to our attention’.
RealGuard Live Video Guarding was ultimately chosen by Sydney Zoo. Our highly skilled RealGuard technicians successfully integrated all of the existing alarm and CCTV equipment and networks scattered throughout the 41 acre site including the zoned perimeter electric fence. The RealGuard team then added cameras and intruder detection sensors at identified critical points throughout the site, increasing the system capability to include 24×7 Remote Video Monitoring. Any identified intruders are immediately ‘warned off’ over the site’s intergrated digital audio systems, and Police are called to respond to any identified criminal incidents in progress. This unique and proactive ‘end to end’ security solution is designed to minimise or eliminate onsite guards, while providing immediate response by warning off detected intruders before they have opportunity to cause damage or mischief…. ‘stopping crime before it happens.’
‘For us RealGuard was an ideal solution’ said Mr Burgess. ‘It meant that by combining technology & remotely located manpower we could completely do away with onsite night guards, knowing that any detected incident would be quickly viewed and actioned by RealGuard operators.’
Available capital for this project was limited, and known fixed long term costs were also a key objective of zoo management. Sydney Zoo therefore chose to rent the entire RealGuard system equipment and installation, thus avoiding capital expense and enjoying 100% tax deductibility and fixed operational costs.
Mr Burgess further stated ‘We also hired RealGuard Rapid eployment Live Video Guarding towers during the zoo construction phase when the site was most vulnerable to theft and vandalism, which proved to be very effective in protecting both us and our contractors.’
The final result, Sydney Zoo now has a world-leading end to end security solution combining the latest technology in intruder detection with fast manpower response while enjoying six figure annual savings compared to the deployment of onsite security guards.
