Harrow International School Bangkok

Key Metrics

• 80% reduction in incident response and investigation time

• >2,000 daily visitors

• >1,000 vehicles monitored daily

• 10-year hardware warranty protecting long-term investment

Background

Nestled within 35 acres of verdant landscape in northern Bangkok, Harrow International School provides outstanding British-style education to day and boarding students from 18 months to 18 years of age. Behind this serene educational environment lies a remarkable security transformation led by Operations Manager Mark Atkinson.

The Challenge: Evolving Systems on a Growing Campus

"We had a collection of different systems around the school and this campus now is around 22 years old," explains Mark. "Technology in this market moves really quickly. Always has and always will. I think the school in the past just found itself seeing various companies coming into the scene with different cameras and technology.”

The result was a patchwork of isolated systems, each with its own hardware and unique requirements. With thousands of students, staff, and visitors on campus each day, Mark's team faced increasing demands on their security systems, with limitations in playback, consistent image quality, and storage.

The Solution: Building an Expandable Security Ecosystem

"We wanted to move, and we wanted to simplify our infrastructure. We wanted the best quality cameras that we could find to give us the best quality output in terms of video monitoring. And we wanted a company that was going to be able to grow with us," explains Mark. "We liked the fact that Verkada is cloud-based and that it is a constantly evolving and improving platform. A lot of the time in tech services, you buy a product and then its performance gradually declines over time."

The 10-year hardware warranty was another decisive factor. "Usually you would look at hardware on a system and after five or six years, you would start having to budget for a certain amount of replacements and overhaul costs," Mark points out. "No other vendor we met was offering anywhere near 10 years on warranty."

Rather than attempting a complete overhaul at once, Harrow Bangkok chose a methodical approach. "We're currently operating with 140 cameras and continuing to expand. At least 50 more are planned for installation within this calendar year."

A recent renovation demonstrates their comprehensive vision: "We renovated  one of our boarding houses last year, and part of the refurbishment of that building was going 100% Verkada-managed for the whole building. That's our first building-wide rollout with 23 cameras and 11 access controls."

Optimized Operational Outcomes

The impact has been transformative. Mark notes that their previous systems had limitations in capturing useful footage for some of the security requests, whereas the Verkada platform now enables them to retrieve consistently high-quality footage in 80-90% of cases, greatly enhancing their ability to resolve incidents. 

This significant efficiency improvement is measurable. "Where an investigation would have taken an hour, it's now taking us 10 minutes. That’s about an 80% reduction in time spent," says Mark.

For a boarding campus, remote capabilities have proven invaluable. "We're a 24/7 school. We never really close. We've always got weekends, holidays, even though the academic side of the school might be closed and we may not have boarders on site, we're likely still to have residents," explains Mark. If there is something going on at school when I’m not on site, I can access the system remotely to see what’s going on and provide support to the on-site team to manage it effectively.”

The AI-powered search capabilities have also particularly impressed the team. "To be able to just go into the search part of the system and type in, for example, 'a person in a red hat' – and then have this within a few minutes, I've got a couple of weeks worth of images of people fitting that description," Mark explains. This sophistication also extends to incident reporting, "where you can put all the video footage in from different locations and different cameras at different times and package them all up in one location."

Looking Ahead: A Premium Security Vision

Today, Harrow Bangkok continues its security transformation journey, prioritizing high-traffic areas first: "The playgrounds, sports facilities, boarding, main entrances, roads, and walkways were our first priority. Now we're upgrading perimeter security as well, further enhancing those areas. And then we're just starting to install more cameras in corridors now because we are continually expanding the coverage," explains Mark. "Eventually we want above 90% coverage around the campus."

The school has become an advocate for Verkada's solutions throughout the region. "We were the first in Thailand, probably one of the first in the region," Mark shares. "We are a premium  school focused on delivering exceptional quality standards. We want partners that can support us to continue to be exemplary, to be world class, and security is a big part of that."

"How many times in life do you buy a product that gets better with age? And Verkada is actually getting better with age due to the continuous software upgrades," he observes. "The only other product I can think of that gets better with age is a bottle of wine. Cars depreciate; and with technology, for example, you can buy the latest phone today, and by tomorrow it already seems 12 months behind."

In choosing Verkada, Harrow International School Bangkok made a strategic investment that continues to appreciate in value. "The system is constantly improving and that's not costing us anything extra to get those improvements," Mark concludes. "It's just part of the deal."