Teltrac Upgrades Invercargill Airport with Verkada Cloud CCTV.
Teltrac Upgrades Invercargill Airport with Verkada – Teltrac has completed a CCTV system upgrade at Invercargill Airport using Verkada cloud surveillance technology. The deployment resolves key operational issues with the airport’s legacy system and brings enhanced coverage, accessibility, and functionality across terminal, airside, and infrastructure areas.
Verkada cloud-connected cameras are now covering the terminal interior (passenger areas, baggage claim, check-in), external areas (car parks, roadways), airside operations (aircraft stands), remote infrastructure (pump house via cellular connection), control tower (PTZ camera for full airfield visibility), with mobile data box for remote site connectivity and Verkada management platform with mobile and desktop access.
According to Stuart Harris, chief executive of Invercargill Airport, the previous system, installed during the terminal’s 2016 construction, had become unreliable.
“We had cameras that were struggling with resolution,” Harris said. “We had a couple of incidents where things happened within the frame of cameras, and when we went back to review the footage, they just weren’t sharp enough to actually show us the critical details.”
Limitations included restricted system access via only 2 on-premises computers, reliance on contractors for system changes, and expansion in fixed blocks of 16 cameras. The absence of network connectivity to remote assets like the airport pump house made surveillance impossible without significant infrastructure works.
“About a year ago, we had a big storm come through, and there was concern that the drain levels were rising,” Harris said. “One of our team was going out there every hour on the hour, checking: Are the pumps still running? What’s the height of the water?”
A trial installation of Verkada cameras through Teltrac followed, allowing cellular connectivity for remote infrastructure. With the cellular network enabled Harris said installation was as fast and simple.
“Teltrac was able to just literally unscrew the old ones, unplug the network cable, plug in the new ones, and they worked,” Harris said. “Everything seemed easy. It just seemed to be quite intuitive as to how to go through, name cameras, group cameras, and create grid views.”
The upgraded system is now used extensively across terminal, airside, and infrastructure environments.
“We use our camera system a heap more,” Harris explained. “The old one was so limited in its functionality it was almost a last resort to go to it.”
Operational benefits include remote monitoring of the pump house, more effective aircraft turnaround coordination, and faster investigation of incidents using synchronised multi-camera views.
Harris said that having 2 or 3 or 4 cameras on the screen at the same time, with all of those views synced up allows security to be more specific and more accurate in how we’re resolving occurrences. Staff now have full control over system operation, reducing reliance on contractors.
“We can control what we do, how we set it up and how we do it,” Harris said.
Scalability is a further advantage.
“We’re always building and modifying things on the airport,” Harris said. “I really like knowing that we don’t need to work out what the infrastructure looks like around how we get new cameras there, or can our system cope with more cameras or different cameras.”
Invercargill Airport is now considering people-counting capabilities through the Verkada platform.
“It’d be really nice if we could find a solution so that we had those people-counting cameras actually as additional cameras on our system as well,” Harris said.
“It’s really hard to understand just how good it is until you’ve actually got it on your system, and you’ve got it on your phone.”
You can learn more about Teltrac here or read more SEN News here.
“Teltrac Upgrades Invercargill Airport with Verkada Cloud CCTV.”
