A number of people are all involved at different stages of the CCTV implementation process that I have illustrated in the diagram below. This diagram shows one perspective of the CCTV process - other aspects could be added or emphasised.

 Who should be trained and on what is somewhat complicated by the fact that different parties could be involved in any of the areas illustrated in the process. Security managers and other personnel of the company, security consultants, and suppliers and installers could all be involved in specifying, installing and the operation of the system. Specifications, including the identification of operational requirements, are usually drawn up by company personnel, although security consultants may be involved at this stage. Selling of systems and equipment may be done by a supplier or an integrated systems provider. Installation could be the responsibility of company personnel, a systems provider, a consultant or a combination of these parties. Management of the CCTV system and the control room is typically an internal company responsibility, but some of these responsibilities are being contracted out at this stage. The same applies to CCTV operators. Technical maintenance of the system may also be done internally or through contracted arrangements, usually through the systems installer. Finally, auditing of systems is ideally the role of management within the company, but this could be performed by outside consultants or companies providing an audit function – if fact a combination of these approaches is probably most suitable. However, as Mike Tennent of Tavcom Training makes the point in an accompanying article in this edition, one needs to be able to expect a designated level of professional competence from whoever is responsible for a particular aspect of your CCTV system. Ensuring that the person gets the relevant professional training and ideally some kind of training certification is one way of establishing this.

Rather than highlighting what training is required from each stage in the process, I have focused on the different areas of training that should be covered. Technical knowledge, for example, is required for most of the stages in the implementation process. In highlighting the training areas I have also drawn extensively from Tavcom Training’s training model and aspects of their course design (see note on Tavcom at the end of this article or go to http://tavcom.com). Each area has a short list of some of the possible training considerations that should be covered in that area.