How Honeywell Helped the Albany Housing Authority

The mission of the Housing Authority in Albany is to provide good housing In safe neighborhoods that is affordable to a wide spectrum of folks income.

We realized it primarily were landlords and our asset is property and apartments and whether that physical security when the conditions of the units, curb appeal all of those things contribute to quality life. So we realize that anything we do to improve people's quality of life is good for the neighbors we're in, it's good for the city and that's primarily what we focus on.

We have a fairly complete security system here and we also have a six person Albany police detail that works for the Albany Housing Authroity. They patrol our sites, and we have an Albany police vehicle assigned here. They are in uniform. And over the years, we've developed a wonderful relationship with law-enforcement community not only will be the county, state, and federal level.

We have about 13 locations and we wanted to single platform. And from support standpoint it's easier to have a single unified platform that allows people to manipulate video and really managed the cameras effectively are. We put out a bid, describing what we currently have and we wanted partner and wanted someone that could be our video expert.

Once Albany put out an RFP we look at it and determine that this was a project that fit us, and so we looked at their security issues and I need to develop a plan and solution that we felt that the budgetary as well as their security issues. We offered Albany Housing Authority a GSA option providing their solutions under the GSA buying power of the Federal Government and in term saved them saved them and additional 18% to 20% above our bid.

A Housing Authority generally is not available to purchase under GSA. But it's a cost savings and that cost savings, we wound up putting back into the project so that again, we were able to hit some of the need more comprehensively as a result of those savings. So it was fantastic that we were able to have somebody creative enough to bring that to our attention

After we did a risk assessment determining the needs that Albany Housing Authority had, and their budgetary issues we utilized Honeywell GHD4DIR Cameras, and the AQXPTVs and the performance series DVRs. With those combination we are able to provide sufficient and adequate coverage of the areas they wanted to protect and be able to tie that back into their central office so that they themselves could watch all of their properties, all at one time.

We use the video surveillance for not just for criminal conduct but we use it for supervisory capabilities. Like in the winter, the director of maintenance now does not leave his office to see if their ploughing the snow, he can check it through the camera system.

In addition, not only did we manage to solve our closed circuit tv needs, but from an IT standpoint, we were able to do it at no additional cost to say we have this ability to look at video in a deployed fashion. hould not only finish salt your are closer continues but from an IT standpoint we will do it but no additional cost to say we have this ability to look at video in a deployed fashion, that we're recording locally. But the reality is our DVRs are monitored, so we have that fault-tolerance at the backend, that we're always getting video. It's great that we can, from any of our offices, any of our desks, see the video from all of our properties, and it's a great tool.

It's certainly, the police are able to see the properties any given time if an alarm comes init I think that's been very useful and I think it's been great.

Albany Housing personnel have been great. You can see the enthusiasm and willingness to certainly provide their tennants with the best housing possible.

I think we came up with a really good solution to get my video we get coverage for formal price and I think it's effectively implemented was able to take the guys that he has the local law-enforcement community Honeywell along with the advice of the folks on the ground the property managers they will really get the test installation that we could hope for.