Cook County Bureau of Technology Surveillance System Assessment & Improvements

County-Wide Power Protection to Support Homeland Security-Funded Camera Upgrades

Cook County is the second-largest county in the U.S. and home to more than 40% of all the residents in Illinois. The Cook County Bureau of Technology (BOT) plans, develops, and maintains enterprise technology services and provides cost-effective and easy-to-use services for residents and County employees. BOT handles enterprise technology procurements for all County government branches and offices, which share a wide area network (WAN), telecom, data centers, and multiple enterprise contracts.

BOT needed to ensure compliance with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security disaster preparedness requirements for uninterruptible power supplies after upgrading video surveillance systems at courthouses, jails, police stations, and other similarly high-security locations across the county’s numerous cities, villages, and townships. BOT trusted Level-1 to conduct a power protection needs assessment for all security cameras at each of its 132 county-run facilities. Level-1 identified a need to redesign and upgrade 82 of the municipal facilities to support installing independent power protection for the new surveillance systems through a federal Homeland Security grant.

In addition to meeting the grant requirements, each facility’s electrical systems also had to comply with local codes. The variation between local codes and individual facility designs required different installation solutions across the 82 locations in need of an upgrade. Level-1 assessed each facility’s needs against local electrical standards, municipal building specifications, and grant requirements. and identified three categories of power protection systems to install. Level-1 contracted with a U.S. manufacturer that supplied equipment for each category, a partnership that allowed Level-1 to obtain volume discount pricing for the equipment to comply with the grant’s ‘Buy American’ requirement.

Location

Chicago

Markets

Government

Services

Technical Services