Shard owners ramp up security after Greenpeace stunt

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Zaun Shard ProtectionSpecialist CCTV with intruder detection systems were installed at the tallest building in the European Union after protesters climbed to the summit.

Six Greenpeace activists, all of them women, scaled the iconic Shard in London and unfurled a flag with “Save the Arctic” on it to protest against plans to drill in the Arctic by the oil company Shell.

The Prime Minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, inaugurated the 95-storey 310m building on 6 July 2012 in a ceremony attended by HRH Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, officially opened the View from the Shard viewing platform on 1 February 2013. But following the Greenpeace stunt on 11 July 2013, the management company for the owners Sellar Property Group and the State of Qatar decided to enhance the security system with the latest state of the art CCTV.

They appointed installer Unique Security, and together evaluated leading products on the market.  SharpView from Zaun Group company EyeLynx was selected on the basis of performance, quality and its focus on reliability.  EyeLynx’s rapid deployment system, Pharos, was installed together with wireless PIRs from Luminite to further secure the perimeter and the main escalators to London Bridge station.

Facing continued problems with the installed Lenel product for the main CCTV, EyeLynx provided a back up SharpView NVR for critical cameras in time for a Royal visit from Her Majesty the Queen and HRH Prince Phillip in November 2013.

This unit worked seamlessly with the installed Pharos cameras using EyeLynx’s SharpView VMS and demonstrated to the management team how the security could be drastically improved by recording in High Definition quality and retaining video for at least 30 days for all the building’s CCTV cameras.

The complete CCTV system was subsequently changed over to SharpView in January 2014, with over 200 cameras recording to ten SharpView Corporate NVRs incorporating over 200TB of storage, while four SharpView Manager Workstations allow the security team to manage and control the entire security system, on desktop monitors and a 16ft video wall in the control room.

Zaun Ltd
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01902 796699