Specialist CCTV with intruder detection systems was installed at the tallest building in the European Union after protesters climbed to the summit.
Six Greenpeace activists, all 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 owner’s 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 EyeLynx was selected based on performance, quality and its focus on reliability. EyeLynx’s rapid deployment system, Pharos, was installed with wireless PIRs from Luminite to secure further the perimeter and the main escalators to London Bridge station.
Facing continued problems with the installed Lenel product for the main CCTV, Zaun Group company EyeLynx provided a backup 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. It 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.
