Quick survey, who looks after CCTV and door locks at your school?

[MrWu]

Hi there

 

im having a meeting to clarify what core responsibilities IT this coming Monday, could you guys tell me who looks after your CCTV systems  (purchase, install and maintenance) and building access systems  (door locks, card printing and setting up access permissions) just interested in whether your IT department also cover those areas, we are also a trust so potentially different sites too..

 

many thanks !

 

 

[Steve21]

Depends what bit you're referring to here, but roughly 50/50 split

For example, installation - external companies normally (but if it's an internal one anything drilling/power etc is site, anything cabling/programming IT). Standard maintenance like cleaning/power issues - Site, anything programming/access control/badges - IT

Steve

[STSM2113]

admissions prints id cards, and orders all cards (non prox), holders and lanyards. site activates net2 fobs (ordered 230 at time of installation which has worked well), only staff have net2 tags, so they have access to all doors mon-fri 7.30am-6pm, then 9a-1p sat cctv installation is done by an external company and managed by network manager. purchasing done by sbm with assistance by network mgr

[DrBeaker]

People don't come to IT for traditional keys, so I don't understand why this would ever be IT departments.

 

In every private sector job I've had, this was ALWAYS the facilities team's responsibilities. Same as the CCTV. Because it's a FACILITY issue and they're responsible for the FACILITY (read site teams in schools) not IT.

 

Why suddenly in schools 'because it has a computer' involved somewhere in the workflow, that suddenly all brain cells from other departments seem to vanish and it becomes an IT problem?

 

Just because IT folk are competent and technical doesn't mean responsibility for every system should fall down to them. We're not and can't be experts in every single system or equipment used in schools.

 

This comes in with the the devaluing of jobs thread that a lot of IT folk in schools feel is the case. 

Edited September 14, 2025 by DrBeaker

[jmak]

The only point I'd expect to be involved would be at procurement - I would give a list of non-functional requirements, like network compatibility, security (including how long they provide updates) and compatibility with any existing BMS equipment that's installed. I wouldn't expect to test against those standards, just review to ensure they're included in the contract.

I'd then expect whoever installs it to come to me when they want to connect it to the network. 

 

Obviously this didn't happen when our new building was specified and there was no handover from the installer to the maintenance company and because it was installed before we occupied the building, they just connected it up with some unmanaged switches and it has been a nightmare to configure them all to work together.

 

When we moved in, the whole BMS was running off a single desktop PC in a room that looked like it had a cement and dust explosion and no one had any instructions. And yes, we did spend days and days getting it into some kind of usable state.

 

 

[ICT-Joe]

Similar answer to Steve - it's a split here. Now we're using more cameras that go on the network, we purchase them, a third party installs them, and then the Estates team keeps track of things like viewing angles and recording downloads. Once they are installed, we only get involved should they go offline. We were initially involved with changing the camera angles but pushed back on this as this was deemed beyond our remit. 

 

Regarding doors, we were asked to purchase a printer but other than setting up online readers, that's where we end our support; Admin print the cards and Estates set up the door access.

[CalmBlueOcean]

Pretty much most of it falls on me in our small-ish secondary.

When I first started, it was the domain of the Estates Manager to manage both building access and CCTV. Slowly but surely it began to get taken up by IT, for 'reasons' (mainly that Estates didn't want the responsibility and SLT were more than happy to shift it to IT).

So now, I run and maintain the building access (Net2), only calling in Paxton when there are physical door issues we can't resolve. As for CCTV, it's a very odd situation of not getting to choose the supplier or make of cameras (Estates do that), but then I have to do the daily running of it - check the camera angles regularly, install and configure it, maintain it. Estates literally just contact the contractors/installers on my behalf if there is an issue I can't resolve.

[Rob_D]

Similar to everyone else.

We help with CCTV setup and troubleshooting as it's all IP and runs over our network. If there are any problems we look initially, but normally only to the point of "it's nothing to do with our network" or rebooting it didn't help, before calling vendor support. Site team manage the access, recordings, and all the day-to-day stuff, and external company deal with any actual problems with the system. 

Doors access, site team manage physical unlocking and keys and any other "local to the door" controls, ICT manage the ID cards and centralised electronic locking/unlocking, with external company to do installations (often with our support for networking and switch config) and deal with any issues that rebooting doesn't fix.

[3s-gtech]

Simialr to above - it's split. I handle the software side of both, and will raise a job with Premises if something has broken hardware wise as we'd then get in the suppliers/sparks.

[Pottsey]

Split. IT do the controllers, ID badges, CCTV and like from a software side. Site team do mechanical or hardware faults, yearly maintenance (Cleaning of CCTV).

[psydii]

Same. Its a split. Though we now hold the spares for card readers and controllers and cameras and tills, very much not my budget though.  The day to day admin of the services is handled by the office manager's team. I audit them wrt CCTV access, the business manager audits them on access control cards/cashless catering provisioning. End of year processes have just moved  into the IT Office, but that is due to a specific staffing structure rather than it being where it should sit in a more general case.

[MrWu]

Thank you for all your responses, it will give me enough perspective to see what I need to plan for when we do expand across the trust, for we made be asked to look after the locks too (we already handle CCTV across other 2 primary schools)

 

 

[DrBeaker]

7 hours ago, MrWu said:

Thank you for all your responses, it will give me enough perspective to see what I need to plan for when we do expand across the trust, for we made be asked to look after the locks too (we already handle CCTV across other 2 primary schools)

 

 

 

Thing is I bet your estates team has double the staff your IT team has, so they have more resources to manage it. Unless they want to start resetting kids passwords etc as a swap - this is potentially major scope creep for the IT team.

Unless you and the team are appropriately compensated, for extra duties - you aren't going to have a happy IT team otherwise.

 

We've already had the argument that the estates team seem to sub-contract everything and stand around drinking tea most of the day, so WHAT do they actually do by contrast given the issues we see around the site.

 

Appreciate YMMV however 

 

 

 

[TwistedHelixis]

Its all down to other staff, but I am more than happy to help with any IT issues those staff might have with the Door systems or CCTV

 

EDIT, although I do manage the backups for these systems.

EDIT 2, If its a front facing system, someone else should be more than cable of managing that system. If its something behind the scenes that needs updating / adjusting or migrating, like a server, then ill do that.

Edited September 17, 2025 by TwistedHelixis

[mrbios]

We do the entirety of the CCTV (70 cameras, will max out at about 85 by the time we're finished) and we manage the doors and door access (Paxton Net2). We have a badge printer, take staff and student photos (excluding Y7/Y10 professional ones) and manage the sign in system (Signinapp)

 

Site budget just pays for new doors to be added or costs of repairs. IT pays for install of network points to them.

Edited September 17, 2025 by mrbios