Transport for London

The Engagement

Technical Growth are consultants at Transport for London, where we were hired to provide Telecommunications Architects for the Congestion Charge Scheme and for the Directorate of Traffic Operations.

This has been an ongoing engagement for the last 7 years, however this case study focuses only on one specific project.

This engagement was to supply telecommunications architect advice for the Directorate of Traffic Operations, who have been looking at the feasibility to convert their existing on-street analogue CCTV system for traffic monitoring to an IP based platform.

The Problem

TfL’s existing CCTV solution encompasses some 900 camera sites situated at the road-side distributed throughout Greater London. These camera sites feed back to a central location, via analogue point to point optical fibre connections to a video switching matrix, which distributes the video feeds to a variety of users throughout TfLs estate.

  • The communications network is extremely expensive.
  • It relies on proprietary camera control solutions.
  • It has limited capacity, scalability and resilience.
  • The lease on the building housing the existing video matrix was due for expiry in 2011.
  • The underlying technology has reached end of life.

The Scope of Works

Technical Growth were hired to provide Telecommunications Network Architects to advise TfL on the most appropriate communications architecture and mechanism to migrate the existing CCTV sites to an IP platform.

Key activities undertaken in this role were:

  • Feasibility study to determine whether IP video solutions were mature enough to ensure mission critical services.
  • Appropriate IP based MPLS Architecture to support video and other applications.
  • RFP process to brief the telecommunications market as to our requirements without being constrained to formal public sector procurement restrictions.
  • Formal Public Sector procurement exercise. ITT and contract construction, through to full vendor selection and contract negotiation and award.
  • The Supplied Solution

Our consultants provided a high level architecture, that determined the most cost effective communications architecture out there.
After running a variety of trials, we determined that a variety of access circuits could be capable of supporting Multi-Cast IP video, but that added value could be achieved by utilising VRFs to support multiple applications at the road-side, such as Traffic Signal Control and Congestion Charging infrastructure using the same access circuits, reducing the cost of providing separate physical infrastructure to the roadside. In addition, we provided an architecture for high performance, high resilience 10GigE MPLS core network between TfL core sites.

We then ran a market sounding/RFP exercise to brief the market, determine the best fit MPLS service suite and provide cost information for the internal Business Case.
Following internal acceptance for this phase of the work, we then subsequently undertook a full Public Sector procurement exercise, writing the Statement of Requirements for this network and an associated call-off contract, including specification of Service Levels and the construction of the full contract.
Our consultants were involved throughout the procurement, acting as Technical Design Authority and were fundamental in the Vendor Selection process.

This contract has a value in excess of £30M.

The Next Steps

Our Consultants have recently been engaged to act as Technical Design Authority throughout the implementation phase, which will see 900 Camera Sites migrated to the new solution, the construction of the 10GigE MPLS core network and the integration and development of the new Application required for Camera Control, Selection and Display.

As part of this process, we will set up the operational elements of the contract, specify fault management processes and commission this large scale communications network.

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