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• Cambridgeshire and Suffolk
  Joint Fire Control
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Cambridgeshire and Suffolk
Joint Fire Control

Ever wondered what happens if there’s a fire at the building where emergency operators take 999 calls? Teri Seaber has. She found that diverting calls was complex and not fast enough.

Now at the new Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Combined Fire Control she’s confident that the touch of a button will divert calls to wherever the operators are evacuated to. Thanks to BT Assure Voice Continuity that whole process takes just a few seconds.

Furthermore, incoming calls have a backup route if anything happens to the
main exchange, making Teri’s fire service more resilient than ever before.

The Business Challenge

Major incidents pose a particular communications challenge to emergency services. On the one hand, when disaster strikes the need to communicate and respond as quickly as possible can be critical to saving lives. And on the other, major incidents can affect the communication infrastructure on which those responders rely. This might, for example, hinder the answering of 999 calls or their ability to co-operate effectively where multiple agencies are involved.

Teri Seaber, Group Commander at the new Cambridgeshire and Suffolk Combined Fire Control, takes up the story: "Being able to maintain our legally-obligated level of response was a particular concern when we decided to combine the Cambridgeshire and Suffolk fire controls into a single unit." The merger made sense on economic grounds, but also made it more imperative than ever to ensure there was no interruption to the single

Solution

The Combined Fire Control, which answers emergency 999 calls for both Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service and Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service, is based at Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire.

Before the merger took place, the existing control at Cambridgeshire had a divert procedure for unanswered 999 calls: if there were no answer from the primary line they would be automatically rerouted to a secondary number in the same centre.

If within two minutes there were still no response, calls would be passed to a buddy brigade. This was resilient, but the technology behind it was very complex. It meant that if they needed to relocate to their secondary control, it was a challenge to carry out the quickly needed changes.

An upgrade from the legacy Huntingdon analogue system to a digital platform opened up the possibility of using BT Assure Voice Continuity. A service that enables virtually instant call re-routing in the cloud, BT Assure Voice Continuity ensures that emergency services can stay operational through almost any level of disruption.

Value

The most striking outcome is the simplicity of redirecting phone lines at the centre, which can now be done in just a couple of seconds. Using the BT Assure Voice Continuity service, call-forwarding plans can be accessed with a single call.

“It’s absolutely brilliant because it’s always live," confirms Teri Seaber. “If we ever had to evacuate, we can mobilise from the car on the way to our secondary control. With BT Assure Voice Continuity I just have to dial one number and key in a security code. Two further digits identify the call-forwarding plan and all phone lines will then immediately divert to our buddy brigade without delay."

While that’s going on, the number the buddy brigade calls to speak to the Huntingdon centre automatically diverts to a mobile phone that control operators carry with them on the 15-minute trip to the secondary control centre.

The switch from analogue to digital at Huntingdon also meant that the Combined Fire Control took advantage of the BT Enhanced Information Service for Emergency Calls (EISEC). This automatically passes on information about the caller’s location to the emergency service taking the call. At the same time BT also installed additional hardware to ensure that 999 calls would still get through to the centre even if the Huntingdon telephone exchange were affected by an incident.

Teri Seaber concludes: “The merger of the two control centres has created a more resilient and cost effective service. The BT Assure Voice Continuity service, coupled with other resilience mechanisms, now means we’re as disaster-proof as it’s possible to be."