Memorandum from Buckinghamshire and Milton
Keynes Fire Authority (FIRE 09)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— Whilst Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes
Fire Authority (BMKFA) has expressed concerns on a number of occasions
regarding the FiReControl Project (the Project) Members and Officers
of the Service have worked to support it throughout its life.
— The deadlines required by the Project
have been demanding at times but officers of the Service have
consistently met these in order to avoid causing further delay
often at the expense of local initatives.
— The delays in providing a credible solution
mean that Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service (BFRS) Officers
struggle to "sell the concept" to staff groups.
— Project credibility has been further
affected by regular slippage.
— BMKFA has serious concerns regarding
the manner in which costs will be met in the future and information
offered by CLG has provided little reassurance.
— At this time BMKFA is predicting that
an additional £350,000 per annum will be required to
support the discharge of duties under Section 7 of the Fire
and Rescue Services Act 2004 (FRS Act 2004) following cutover
to the Regional Control Centre (RCC).
— Continued uncertainty over the Project
increase the risk to this Authority created by loss of Control
room staff.
— At present the costs associated with
provision of national infrastructure will fall to local Fire and
Rescue Authorities.
— The initial project scope has now been
altered resulting in the removal of some elements such as the
optimal resource location software, the result being that the
Project now offers little that is not already available in many
existing Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) Control rooms.
— Provision of equipment such as Mobile
Data Terminals (MDTs) is welcomed but the delays associated with
the Project mean that the technology offered is now considered
out of date in many FRS.
INTRODUCTION
1. This report is submitted on behalf of
Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes Fire Authority and supports
the South East Regional Management Board response. It is intended
to offer a more local perspective for the consideration of the
Committee.
2. Within this submission reference is also
made to the Firelink Project which, whilst not part of the direct
Select Committee remit, is fundamentally linked to the Project
and is quite obviously a key enabler.
BFRS PROJECT INVOLVEMENT
3. BFRS has resourced the Project from its
earliest stages and remains well placed to meet the deadlines
and milestones set. This organisation believes that the concept
itself is a valid one if somewhat utopian. However throughout
the Project BMKFA has expressed concerns regarding the removal
of local control rooms in favour of an untried and untested concept.
Indeed throughout the Project slippage and technical difficulties
have further reinforced this perspective.
4. At this stage, and with budgets likely
to be adversely affected by the current financial climate, this
Authority is more concerned that ever regarding the lack of clarity
on Project costs. At this time there are no clear costs for either
the FiReControl or Firelink Projects upon which the Authority
is able to base its future cost projections.
5. The limited functions that will be carried
out by the RCC's will almost certainly result in a large number
of activities that are currently carried out by existing control
room staff having to be undertaken elsewhere within FRS. This
will undoubtedly dilute any possible cost savings and indeed many
FRS, including BFRS, have real concerns that any savings will
be realised.
6. At Project start BFRS had an old but
reliable mobilising system. In the early stages of the Project
it was felt inappropriate to begin a replacement project for that
system given the impending RCC's. However following a number of
Project delays and the ageing system that we were using it became
apparent that there was a need to consider a replacement. BFRS
has had that replacement system in place since mid-2009 and
has had to do so in order to ensure that it can continue to meet
its statutory duties under the FRS Act 2004.
7. BFRS has chosen to upgrade some elements
of its existing mobilising system, but has not carried out a total
refresh as might have been undertaken had FiReControl not been
underway. There will therefore be further work to be undertaken
should the FiReControl Project not deliver a system in the near
future.
8. Despite the slippage BFRS has, to date,
managed to maintain a technically capable and appropriately staffed
control room but the continued uncertainty will undoubtedly begin
to take its toll in the near future as staff look for increased
job security.
9. Dorney Lakes in South Bucks is within
a mile of the border with Royal Berkshire and is one of the 2012 Olympics
venues. Had the project delivered according to a number of the
earlier deadlines then the upgrade would have been completed prior
to the Olympics with the obvious advantages of integration that
this would have provided should a response be required to the
events. However BFRS is now scheduled to cutover just after the
Olympics in late 2012 creating a double negative: BFRS will
not be part of the integrated FiReControl solution; we will also
have to balance a significant amount of preparatory work required
immediately prior to cutover whilst managing the risks associated
with supporting an Olympics event.
THE CAPABILITIES
BEING PROVIDED
10. The delays now mean that what may have
been a viable advance in technical capability a number of years
ago is now common place within many FRS. This means that a vast
quantity of public money will now be spent with little hope of
any real advances. Granted the ability to mobilise across borders
will be an advantage but this assumes that there is cross-border
mobilisation on a large scale, this is not the case and therefore
the advantages that this offers are limited.
11. The technology that is being offered
in terms of vehicle mounted MDTs to facilitate data transfer and
improve availability of risk information to crews are now in wide
use within many FRS including this Service. The proposed software
provision is already in use by a number of FRS but in a far more
integrated way than is currently available via this Project. It
should also be noted that a number of Services already have a
more advanced MDT solution in use meaning that at cutover to RCC's
they may have to accept a reduction in functionality.
12. The MDT hardware offered under the Firelink
Project is now also showing its age before it has even been fitted,
a number of Services having now taken the decision to replace
fixed MDT's as provided under Firelink with demountable units
which have many advantages in terms of functionality for the support
of Fire Service operations.
13. The Firelink project has provided an
improvement to inter-brigade and inter-service communications,
however many FRS have seen their wide area radio costs multiply
by a factor of 10. Whilst Firelink is a key enabler for the FiReControl
Project there has been a lack of standardised provision with each
FRS allowed to specify its own requirements. The FiReControl Project
has also, to date, failed to clearly detail the methods that will
be used to mobilise resources. This has resulted in no standardised
provision for FRS and as such it is entirely possible that some
FRS will have to incur further costs involved in the provision
of further communications equipment in order to ensure that an
RCC is able to mobilise their resources.
14. On a purely emotive issue one of the
assumptions of the FiReControl Project is that technology is able
to deal with any local issues and as such there is no need for
local knowledge in local control rooms. This is a flawed concept
since technology may be able to deal with locality issues but
it will struggle to support people who are genuinely in distress
and for that there is no substitute for the human factor. Concentrating
on meeting caller demand based upon purely quantity factors completely
misses the need to appreciate that when people are under significant
stress in an emergency quality of call management becomes a more
important factor. The demand to handle calls quickly will place
considerable pressure upon RCC Control Room Operators to concentrate
on quantity not quality.
15. Project reviews have resulted in some
elements being removed. For example the proposed resource optimisation
system based upon the FSEC algorithms has been removed. This was
designed to ensure that risk to the public was appropriately managed,
but this has been removed to be replaced by a system whereby Brigades
simply nominate key stations based upon a set of simple, but arbitrary
rules. The ability for CRO's and the RCC to balance risk at times
of high demand is therefore removed in favour of a basic set of
rules simply because it became apparent that this was too difficult
and/or too expensive to achieve.
16. There are also a number of performance
issues relating to the prime contractor; to date the DCMT1 terminal
has failed to deliver anything useful to BFRS. Both it and DCMT2 have
experienced significant delays and MDT1.0a is now faced with a
significant credibility issue due to the difficulty in transferring
data to the terminals and no immediately available network capability.
17. At this time the main system known as
the Mobilising and Resource Management System (MRMS) does not
appear to exist and the schema required to allow FRS to develop
interfaces to this and other critical systems is not yet available
prompting further fears of impending delay.
PROJECT GOVERNANCE
18. The current RCC premises costs (£160,000 per
month) are significant, the total project cost predictions, £43 million
(as detailed in parliamentary questions), is a significant sum
and one which many members of the public may feel is disproportionately
high. With a general election due to take place in the next year,
and with the suggestion that other parties may take a different
view to the existing Government, project credibility is further
undermined.
19. The contracts themselves have remained
an area of contention with many FRAs. Whilst BFRS would like to
support the Project and in particular to ensure that the systems
and services provided meet contractual obligations a lack of visibility
has hampered this.
20. Members of this Authority and Officers
of the Service do not believe that either the contractor, nor
CLG, have properly engaged with us as key stakeholders and perhaps
more importantly it is felt that there is in many cases a lack
of true understanding of the business needs associated with the
receipt and handling of emergency calls.
21. The recent consultation on in-service
contract management has further undermined the relationship between
this Authority and CLG by not providing useful information or
alternative options with the circular. Indeed it appears that
prior to the consultation deadline work was already underway to
recruit Board members for the Non-Departmental Public Body making
the consultation process appear as a paper exercise.
22. The lack of stakeholder engagement at
an early stage in respect of the RCC building, in the South East
at least, has created concerns over the specification process
used. It is felt by this Authority that the building is over-specified
and will cost considerably more than needed. This cost will have
to be borne, at least in part, by the residents of Buckinghamshire
and Milton Keynes. There remains no route through which these
costs can be challenged by this Authority.
CONCLUSION
23. Within BFRS there is a very real concern
that staff have lost faith in the project and there is no doubt
that after a further three years our project team will be suffering
a considerable degree of scepticism over whether the project will
ever reach fruition, whilst project credibility is probably now
at its lowest ebb.
24. BFRS is confident that the quality of
our data is high and that we will be in a position to provide
what is required by an RCC. However the large scale automation
required within the RCC environment is an area that historically
FRS have not utilised simply because emergencies, by their very
nature, are difficult to predict accurately and whilst there may
well be some similarities many require a more flexible approach
that would be difficult to achieve through automation, hence the
need for experienced, well trained staff who have the time to
make quality decisions not be forced to achieve a quantity target.
25. It is accepted the Project has demonstrated
that in the event of large scale and/or widespread emergencies
there is a need for a greater integration. As such a local control
room in each FRS may not be the ideal approach but consideration
to simply integrating existing facilities (where they remain suitably
robust) must now be reconsidered.
26. Whilst this Authority will continue
to resource the Project to the best of its ability the pressures
being placed upon the Service to deliver in so many other areas
will undoubtedly begin to impact on FiReControl deliverables.
Given the almost inevitable further delays and this Authorities
stated position that it supports local control rooms staffed by
local operators it is the recommendation of BMKFA that the continuation
of this Project must be carefully considered.
January 2010
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