CCTV engineers are you listening?
CCTV engineers, luddites! Harsh perhaps, but in our experience it is the CCTV engineers within the security industry who least like change. Over the years they have seen little change to how their basic job works. Yes regulation means they have had to embrace a few tweaks to the standards and to be fair most engineers are happy to take these on board, but new technology presents a different problem. Up until the last few years the only serious technology introduced into their job spec has been the DVR. Most engineers did come to terms quite quickly with the new menus and the general installation of the now common DVR. Rarely however did this require the use of a laptop to set up and any networking tended to be done by a commissioning engineer who swept up after them. Now however things are about to change in a big way and those who don’t make the effort to embrace new ideas will be left behind.
IP video systems.
IP video systems are here and this requires a whole new approach by CCTV engineers who to all intensive purposes will see many parts of their job disappear over the next 5 years. Basic IT skills are an essential and probably much more than just the basics will need to be instilled into the CCTV engineers job specs to enable them to install and understand IP video in the new era.
To be fair to IP camera manufacturers, they are very keen to get training to everyone they can. Rarely does a day go by without an email landing into the inbox advertising a free training course for engineers to help them brush up on the skills they need . However in this climate of recession CCTV installers have cut back on all training and even if this training is free they still have to consider the cost implications of taking their engineers off the road for the duration of the course. So are CCTV engineers going to be left to hang out to dry and simply be replaced by IT network technicians? Well we will have to wait and see but a wake up call has been sent out …..is anyone listening?