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13 October 2010
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A word from Malcolm Keys - Chief Executive Officer
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This month we welcome Marc Colborne to the team as General Manager. Marc joins us from the UK, where he has served eight years with Airwave Solutions in a variety of leadership roles, both technical and operational. His wealth of knowledge and experience will be greatly valued and we look forward to having him onboard.
In this newsletter you will read about one of the Airwave projects Marc has been involved with: the UK Government's Firelink project, which has involved bringing all the Fire and Rescue Services across England, Scotland and Wales onto the nationwide Airwave network. The project demonstrates some of the practical issues—and benefits—of bringing together multiple emergency services agencies onto common critical communications infrastructure.
We also highlight the importance of adhering to best-practice service management in this issue. All the most sophisticated technology in the world will not result in a highly available and reliable network without the right processes in place. It's not about what system is implemented, but about how it is used, day-in, day-out. We believe that adhering to the ISO20000 international standard for service management is one of the most important criteria and underpins our entire business.
Airwave will be attending the Radio Comms Connect event in Melbourne in mid November to present our thoughts on ‘Delivering Mission Critical Mobile Data solutions to the public safety community'. I hope to see you there.
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Certified service management underpins availability
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As a managed services provider for critical communications, Airwave is completely committed to delivering consistently high service reliability and availability. Airwave has been compliant and certified to ISO20000, the international standard for best practice in IT service management, since January 2007 and considers service management a key business driver.
The ISO20000 standard exists in two parts, where ‘part 1’ promotes the adoption of an integrated process approach to efficiently deliver managed services to meet business and customer requirements, and ‘part 2’ outlines a code of practice for service management within the context of part 1. Put simply, the standard provides a framework for the development and implementation of processes that must be followed by all aspects of the business (including personnel) in order to best service the client. It ensures that all incidents are logged, problems dealt with, reports issued and loops closed.
Airwaves’ sophisticated Service Management System has been specially designed to monitor network operations and create reports against the various KPIs by which Airwave measures its performance for different clients. This operates in tandem with the Service Management Suite of software tools and applications. Together these underpin the company’s leading service management strategy, which involves effective and efficient processes to support multiple work streams—including problem management, change management, availability management and capacity management, to name a few.
For example, Airwave’s ISO20000-compliant approach to problem management involves the establishment of defined responsibilities, the logging of decisions regarding rectification, and accurate reporting to ensure the loop is closed. Or, in the case of network capacity issues, which inevitably arise in the case of an incident involving multiple emergency responders, the Airwave system tracks live use of the network and determines when or if additional capacity needs to be deployed.
Airwave continues to develop the Service Management System, enabling the business to be more responsive to immediate business and customer issues, and to provide services that are business-led rather than technology driven. It has also enabled the business to build upon and support the business strategy, improving the efficiency of services in all areas, thus improving operating costs and service delivery.
In adhering to the ISO20000 IT service management standard, Airwave offers a superior service to its clients, partners and suppliers—one that is not only highly available and reliable, but also responsive and efficient, with true transparency and accountability, and ultimately offers maximum value and performance.
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Delivering the Firelink
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All Fire & Rescue Services (FRS) across England, Scotland and Wales are now reaping the benefits of improved communications, following the successful implementation of the Airwave digital radio system. Known as the Firelink project, an ambitious Government initiative designed to provide a common communications service to all FRS across Great Britain, the deployment represents a huge step forward in emergency communications.
The Firelink project commenced in 2008, and has been deployed in two main phases to replace multiple outdated regional networks. The first phase involved the establishment of network infrastructure and control rooms equipped with Firelink radios. One of the key requirements was the introduction of extra resilience into the existing nationwide Airwave network already in use by the police; around 1400 Airwave base station sites were hardened to provide a microwave-link ring architecture and seven days of power supply. The installation also ensured that the new system integrates with existing mobilising systems and Incident Command and Control Systems.
Commencing in November 2008, the second stage of the Firelink project saw 10,000 Airwave-enabled radios and mobile data terminals (MDTs) installed into around 8000 FRS appliances and vehicles in London, England, Scotland and Wales. The process involved close cooperation with all 57 individual FRS, as it necessitated the removal and associated temporary replacement of the vehicle or appliance from the fire station or other location.
The culmination of these two stages, recently delivered by Airwave, provides a raft of benefits to all FRS, including clearer voice quality, greater network coverage, and security encryption designed to make eavesdropping impossible. Additionally, the interoperability of the Airwave network allows each FRS to communicate with any other FRS across Great Britain—an invaluable tool for coordinating large-scale events and incidents. The Airwave service also allows FRS to communicate with the police and ambulance command centres as required.
As part of its national solution for the FRS, the Airwave service extends far beyond implementation. After installation and commissioning comes maintenance of Airwave communications equipment in control rooms and appliances, including radio terminals; plus a comprehensive training program. Moreover, ongoing monitoring and remote management of the network ensures the Airwave service remains fully operational at all times.
One of the main design objectives of the Firelink project was the provision of interoperable, wide area radio communications between all three emergency services (police, fire and ambulance) across Great Britain. Representing the most advanced public safety network deployment of any country in the world today, the Airwave network meets this objective—and more. Firelink was a huge and complex project, with many challenges, but teamwork prevailed to yield an on-schedule, successful delivery.
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Click on the link above to read more information regarding the Firelink project.
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