Memorandum from Derbyshire Fire &
Rescue Service (FIRE 05)
SUMMARY
The perceived benefits of the Regional Control
Centre programme were largely as follows:
— To create Control Rooms capable of dealing
with very large incidents, especially cross border.
— To have Control Rooms with a great deal
of technological resilience with commonality of controls to facilitate
fall-back arrangements.
— The accrual of cost savings in moving
from 46 to nine Control Rooms.
— Enhanced collaboration between the emergency
services with such cross border and standardised entities.
— Enhanced service delivery benefits with
more regional working with common procedures, practices, naming
conventions and common key datasets with efficiencies in information
accessibility and resources.
1.0 For the above to be realised, however,
it would appear essential in the first place, purely from an operational
perspective, to sort out common procedures, practices, naming
conventions and common key datasets, certainly across a region
and probably nationally upon which the technological solution
would be based given that the Control Room would no longer be
based within a single FRS but would need to service a number of
FRSs.
1.1 Secondly, it would also appear essential
to sort out the political and legal relationships that would have
to pertain between the RCCs and the individual FRSs and the Government
so that everyone was fully aware of their rights and responsibilities
under the law and within the wider political landscape.
1.2 Thirdly, given the nature of the technological
resilience envisaged for the RCCs with their specified need to
be able to fallback to each other in the event of any serious
failure and the data rich environment that would be needed to
overcome issues of lack of local knowledge etc a tried and tested
"end to end" technological solution needed to be specified
which could support the procedures, practices, naming conventions
and datasets detailed above.
1.3 The Mott Macdonald report of 2003, The
Future of Fire and Rescue Service Control Rooms in England and
Wales, puts forward what it sees as a good example of how a new
integrated regionally based Control Room could realistically be
achieved wherein it cites the example of The South Wales Fire
and Rescue Service which was created from three existing Fire
Services, Gwent, Mid Glamorgan and South Glamorgan.
1.4 The new regional service was created
with all of the appropriate political backing and legal underpinning
in place. Procedures and practices were then rationalised and
common naming conventions and key datasets created for the new
service. Obviously the relationship between the new Regional Control
Centre and the South Wales Fire Service was made clear as the
Control Room was firmly established as part of the new command
structure with the appropriate technology specified to underpin
all of this and put in place with a high level of positive user
engagement.
1.5 It would appear that the FiReControl
project has attempted to do items 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 in parallel
to each other in a rather jumbled fashion rather than in the logical
order pursued in the South Wales Fire Service scenario with the
establishment of a new political framework of responsibilities
followed by a related legal framework, followed by new common
procedures and practices and consequent common naming conventions
and datasets, followed by the specification of appropriate, resilient
technology to underpin all of this with the appropriate user involvement.
Thus we still do not have clear common practices and procedures
in place across the region or nationally and have not established
common naming conventions to any great degree, apart from the
single instance of national call signs. Nor have we identified
key datasets which we all can utilise and appear to be some way
in the distance.
1.6 Although LACCs have been formed to oversee
the RCCs it is still not clear what the legal framework is and
how individual FRSs will relate to the RCCs. What can FRSs legally
expect from the RCCs and what can the RCCs legally expect from
the FRSs. Are indeed the RCCs the agents of the FRSs who thus
far have the legal responsibilities for Fire and Rescue activities
or will there be some other arrangement.
1.7 There is also no clear political framework
in place that encompasses the relationship between the Government,
the LACCs, the RCCs and individual FRSs. However, with all of
that up in the air, a contract has been signed between CLG and
EADS to put in place a technological solution for a national network
of nine RCCS. The FRSs have had no direct sight of this contract
and so cannot comment upon its suitability directly, CLG being
the customer and EADS the contractor with FRSs being some vague
"end user". However as the contract was signed in 2007 it
has become apparent to FRSs that there would appear to be no tried
and tested technological "end to end" resilient solution
ready to be rolled out but merely a core system which is being
constantly added to and refined.
1.8 The related Firelink project which supplies
the radio communications is also a little semi-detached from the
FiReControl project with often unforeseen anomalies when the two
projects coincide. For FRSs it is often difficult to know where
responsibility lies between the two for any specific product or
activity.
1.9 From the FiReControl project, software
products already released have left a lot to be desired in terms
of their quality and appear to be constantly being worked upon.
To the FRSs, therefore, the perception has gained ground that
CLG have signed up to a generalised functional specification which
will be translated down the line into a more refined technical
specification as needs must.
1.10 The cost savings promised also do not
appear to be now realisable with deadlines being continuously
abandoned and with all costs spiralling from their predicted base
possibly as a result of the lack of legal, political, procedural
and technological resolution alluded to above.
1.11 Thus the conclusion appears to be that
major legal, procedural, political problems still exist and even
the technological solution is not settled two years after contract
signing. FRSs, therefore, have little confidence left that all
of these issues can be resolved in a reasonable timeframe and
are already having to look to other possible solutions to prop
up their existing, ageing mobilising systems. This is all the
more galling to FRSs as they perceive that if the one billion
pounds plus, which it is considered will be the cost of the FiReControl
project, had been divided amongst the individual FRSs, perhaps
with some central guidance on levels of resilience and cross border
collaboration, then there would have been more than enough money
for technological resilience and enhanced functionality based
upon existing control room structures. Needless to say staff morale
would also have been rather more enhanced than it is at the present
time.
2.0 ISSUES
2.1 Political and legal framework for RCCs
2.1.1 As expressed above it is crucial for
FRSs to know where they stand in relation to the RCCs. In the
main it is understood that RCCs will carry out the wishes of the
individual FRS when mobilising resources within the FRS's boundaries,
as expressed by the business rules etc formulated by the FRS and
sent across to the RCC. However in exceptional circumstances the
RCC reserves the right to mobilise resources as it sees fit especially
regarding very large incidents, cross border etc by passing FRS
rules in those instances. Thus the RCC by implication has legal
responsibilities in its own right, separate from the FRSs. At
present it is only FRSs which have statutory duties to undertake
fire and rescue operations and to mobilise appropriate resources
in a timely fashion. Statutory duties, it would appear would need
to be extended to include the RCCs. Thus there would have to be
a clear legal demarcation between the rights and responsibilities
of the RCCs as opposed to those of the FRSs.
2.1.2 At present the political and legal
governing bodies of the FRSs consist of Fire Authorities based
upon local authority boundaries. The RCCs are going to be governed,
politically and legally it would appear, by LACCs consisting of
councillors from the region in which they operate. However if
a FRS has a problem with the RCC which it cannot work out using
the normal channels it would have to appeal to the Fire Authority
to take that forward to the LACC for resolution. But as the same
councillors sit on both bodies is there not something of a contradiction
in their respective roles.
2.1.3 Undoubtedly at present there is an
implied overlapping of responsibilities between FRSs and RCCs
which could potentially be dangerous. If the RCCs were wholly
subordinate to the FRSs in their legal obligations, operations
etc then there obviously would be no such problem but with the
RCC's perceived responsibility to act regionally or even nationally
if it needs to then there is a de facto authority embedded within
the organisation which sooner rather than later needs to be translated
into a legal reality.
3.0 COMMON PROCEDURES,
PRACTICES AND
DATASETS
3.1 The need for common procedures, practices,
naming conventions and common key datasets is a high priority
if the RCCs are to function properly across borders. However after
more than five years since the inception of the FiReContol project,
after numerous workshops and seminars at all levels there is perhaps
only one firmly agreed common way of working which has been promulgated
across FRSs and that consists of the establishment of a set of
national call signs. Everything else is still being worked upon.
3.2 All of the above needs to be established
so that FRSs can embed these new procedures, practices, naming
conventions etc into their organisations and this is extremely
time consuming. Once these have been embedded within the FRSs
then mechanisms need to be formulated whereby key datasets related
to these procedures and practices can be sent across to the RCCs.
3.3 Because of the detached nature of the
RCCs (detached from individual FRSs) their ability to operate
effectively will depend to a very large extent on the quality
of the data sent from the FRS so it is essential to ensure that
information rich data is sent across in a timely fashion and that
the integrity of that data is maintained. Similarly data needs
to be received from the RCCs at the FRSs so that the FRSs can
be in a position to know how their resources are being deployed
and how their resources are performing over time (all of which
FRSs are aware of now).
3.4 We appear to be a very long way off
from establishing these things and if the RCCs are not going to
become very poor quality call centres then these things are essential.
The richness and quality of the data used and outputted will to
a large extent dictate the quality of the RCC operation.
4.0 THE TECHNOLOGICAL
SOLUTION
4.1 At contract signing in 2007 the
FRSs were under the impression that CLG had signed up to a tightly
specified "end to end" nationwide mobilising system
which just needed to be rolled out and installed at each station
within each FRS. However as the months and years have rolled by
it has become apparent that the specification has not been that
tight. Initially no station end mobilising kit had been specified
there was merely the core system at the individual RCC.
4.2 The provision of the station end kit
was presumably to be the responsibility of the FRS plus the negotiated
attempt to interface with the RCC's core system. As the difficulties
of that became apparent eventually the powers that be relented
and station end kit was included in the scope of the project.
But this still does not include one key system. FRSs at present,
via a mobilising cabinet, send mobilising messages to stations
which appear on printers and which set off lights and alarms,
alert officers using paging systems or similar and alert retained
fire fighters using proprietary alerter systems consisting of
small range vhf transmitters based at stations, connected to their
control rooms.
4.3 The retained fire fighters have small
pager-type receivers which receive the mobilising call notifying
them to attend their stations. The retained alerter system is
still not included under the FiReControl project, even though
retained fire fighters comprise a substantial part of the FRS's
workforce. It is the FRSs responsibility to supply and maintain
such a system and interface it to the RCC system via the RCC network.
This will complicate the operation of the RCC, obscuring system
responsibility when it should be centred on a single entity (as
it is in most FRSs now). Needless to say if FRSs were setting
up a new mobilising system they would specify such a system end
to end, including retained alerter systems and have maintenance
responsibility operationally in one place.
4.4 Furthermore, this late in the project,
a key functionality of the system has not yet been determined.
There is still no technical definition which defines how officers
will be alerted and mobilised. The recently suggested switch from
the Ericsson core mobilising system to an alternative Intergraph
product this late in the day further enforces the doubts as to
the suitability of the technological solution. CLG and EADS have
suggested that switching systems should not greatly alter the
findings of functional workshops which have attempted to determine
how the system will operate but FRSs experience of system architecture
suggests that each system has its own methods of doing things
embedded within it and it is not so easy to change things.
4.5 So far DFRS has received two major IT
products from the project. These are MDT1a (Mobile Data Terminal
software for holding risk-based data within the fire appliances)
and DCMT1 (Data Collection and Management Toolkit software
for collation of risk based data related to the existing mobilising
gazetteer). Both of these products although based on commercial
"off-the-shelf" software have displayed numerous quality
flaws which have had to be rectified in ongoing and often acrimonious
discussions with EADS and CLG. Indeed a number of issues are still
outstanding.
4.6 Major issues are also still outstanding
regarding such matters as how we will connect to the RCC, how
we will send data to them, how we will receive data from them,
how we will maintain key datasets, how the station end kit which
they are supplying will be installed and maintained etc.
4.7 Thus the conclusion that FRSs have come
to is that there was never a tried and tested technological solution
ready to be deployed which could meet the aspirations of the correct
levels of resilience and functionality detailed within the FiReControl
literature and we are still a long way from achieving those levels.
There is a danger that aspirations will be watered down as problems
with the technological solution multiply to the extent that the
functionality of the RCCs will be worse than the existing functionality
based upon Control Centres in FRSs.
5.0 COSTS
5.1 One of the benefits of the RCC network
was going to be the savings accruing from the reduction of 46 to
nine controls for the country. However it has become apparent
that these predicted cost savings have largely evaporated. Even
the FiReControl literature is not now predicting any substantive
savings. FRSs would point to the time overruns and the still unresolved
issues surroundings all of the above.
5.2 There is still a massive discussion
still to be had between the FRSs and the RCCs as to how much "back
office" functionality will be undertaken in each organisation
to replace what is undertaken now in FRS's control rooms over
and above the simple mobilising process, all of which is not costed.
Although CLG recompense FRS for various so called "new burdens"
costs arising out of the Firelink and FiReControl projects nevertheless
there are still substantial costs which are not met. Large parts
of the extra, unforeseen, expenses incurred for maintaining the
present mobilising system which in DFRS is well over three years
beyond its original end contract date have had to be met by the
FRS.
5.3 A large part of the extra staffing costs
are not met which includes the extra work other staff members
have to undertake within DFRS beyond the core project team. Although
some of these staffing and other costs can be seen to have brought
some value to the FRSs in that they have allowed the FRSs to examine
various procedures and processes, nevertheless it has to be admitted
that much of this cost would be unjustifiable in the ordinary
course of events. Thus there are substantial costs to the FiReControl
project incurred by the FRSs which do not appear within the official
project figures which if they were to be properly costed would
definitely wipe out any proposed savings and would probably show
that the FiReControl project taken as a whole was more expensive
than the status quo with as yet unproven and unrealised benefits.
6.0 CONCLUSION
6.1 Unless certain political, technological
and legal barriers can be quickly overcome to expedite new ways
of working and the appropriate use of common technology then the
project as it now stands is probably not achievable to the quality
standards envisaged in a reasonable timescale.
6.2 As a good number of FRSs have mobilising
systems now well beyond their contracted life it could be a good
time for a number of neighbouring Fire Services to come together
to jointly procure a new locally based but resilient mobilising
system. Thus an alternative model needs to be considered, perhaps
based upon existing control rooms with proper technological and
procedural resilience designed in, between immediately neighbouring
Fire Services.
6.3 FRSs could be legally tasked with planning
for very large incidents which crossed borders as this is primarily
a procedural issue rather than a technological one. Such a project
would involve between two and five services which would form a
manageable project team and have a good chance of reaching some
sort of conclusion in a reasonable timeframe.
December 2009
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