THE GREAT MIGRATION

S/O Martin Waters, A/C/F/O John Moody and Third Officer John Guilfoyle.

Moving to the new digital system has meant a huge amount of work across many departments, Assistant Chief Fire Officer John Moody tells Adam Hyland.

On a visit to the Service Support Centre at the end of May to talk about the additions to the ambulance fleet, Third Officer John Guilfoyle was keen to highlight that the fleet replacement programme was being carried out in tandem with the migration of all vehicles from the analogue VHS radio system to a digital system supplied by TETRA Ireland in order to facilitate integration with the national CAD system. It was a happy coincidence that I happened to be there on the day the last ambulance was migrated, and standing beside that ambulance when the last call on the old system came in.

D/O Martin Cooke, who received the call, described it as “quite a historic moment” while T/O Guilfoyle suggested I talk to Assistant Chief Fire Officer (A/C/F/O) John Moody, who oversaw this landmark project, to hear about the full scale of the plan.

A few days later, I sat down with A/C/F/O Moody via Zoom to hear just what was involved in what he describes as “a very significant day for Dublin Fire Brigade”.

“This is probably the biggest technical development in

LEFT: D/O Martin Cooke communicates the final message on the VHF Radio System to ERCC on 28 May. BELOW: The last VHF message received in DFB control room, from DN21D2 at 15.44.14 Hrs on Friday, 28 May 2021.

many, many years,” he tells me. “It has been a very complex process that began in 2019, and has seen a huge amount of work in planning and physical transition from the Logistics department as well as incredible work from the training team.”

MIGRATION

As part of the Ctri project managed by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management (NDFRM), full national integration consists of the procurement of the CAD system, updating station communications infrastructure, migration to the TETRA network and the launch of the CAD system, and while COVID-19 has slightly delayed the last of these, the first three have now been completed.

“The national project is to introduce the new CAD system to all three call centres in Ireland,” A/C/F/O Moody tells me. “The majority of the fire service in Ireland moved across to TETRA in 2018, and while our Control Centre has been trained in it since then because we oversee all of Leinster, and Cavan and Monaghan, we had to form a plan for all operational personnel.

“The basic necessity came from the fact that we were using ageing technology, the same VHF system we used since its origin that is almost defunct at this stage. VHF has served us very well, but it was becoming increasingly difficult and costly to maintain. Also, in order to facilitate the national CAD system, we needed to overhaul our appliances on a network capable of communicating with more modern integrated CAD systems.”

As with the fleet replacement programme, the TETRA and CAD integration has involved a huge amount of planning and management.

“It is a major project that has involved myself as Project Manager and liaison for Dublin Fire Brigade with TETRA Ireland, and with the relevant management, training team led by S/O Martin Waters, and Control Centre personnel led by ERCC IT Manager and Senior Executive Communications Officer Richard Sheehan, putting together a fleet map, looking at future requirements and specs for each vehicle type, carrying out training and realising the physical migration as overseen by A/C/F/O Richard Hedderman, T/O Guilfoyle and D/O Cooke.

“This is probably the biggest technical development in many, many years”

“That physical migration meant that every resource we have had to be taken out of service, the VHF system had to be stripped out, the TETRA system has to be fitted, with new radios, button boxes, various other equipment and technology – all had to be swapped out. We got all of our resources and necessary equipment together so that we could start the migration, and TETRA provided a fitter, with all of the work done under our supervision in our workshop.

“It was a very big undertaking, and that’s where Logistics really came to the fore. You can imagine the maintenance requirements involved in swapping all of these vehicles over, having them ready for frontline duty.

“On new vehicles, we were able to get the necessary specs included from the start of the build process, and as soon as they came in, they were ready to be fitted. Going forward, all new vehicles will be fitted with TETRA wiring as standard, so we won’t have to go through the same process again. We were able to put them out on the road with the new TETRA system on board within a couple of days.”

TRANSITION & TRAINING

All fire resources began transition in November 2020, and had been fitted on schedule by the end of 2020, with the training phase also incorporated. “This training phase involved designing a training programme and package, with three hours of on-station training to be delivered to more than 900 personnel. It was launched in July 2020 against the backdrop of COVID-19 restrictions and was delivered on schedule by mid-December of 2020, which A/C/F/O Moody says was “a remarkable achievement”. He wishes to give a particular mention not only to S/O Waters, but to S/O Donal Hand, and FF/Ps Ciaran Wilson, Gary Williams, Stephen Cleary and Greg Dunne for their excellent work.

This was followed by ambulance migration, and though they required further work to facilitate technology such as a button box to update status, and handsets that can communicate with the Control Centre and each other away from the vehicle, the changeover was completed within three weeks in May of this year. However, the CAD integration process is ongoing and will see major technological and operational advancements for all DFB vehicles.

CAPABILITIES

“We are still in the process,” A/C/F/O Moody tells me. “TETRA at the moment is a modern, standalone, very reliable radio system but integration with CAD will open a whole new world of capabilities, both for our Control Centre and for our operational personnel. At that stage, we will see the full benefits, allowing for dynamic attendances with the system knowing which resource is nearest to an incident. We will also be able to send and receive information directly to and from the CAD.

“We have navigation systems in the vehicles now but they are standalone, and the next generation update will be fully integrated so an ambulance can get a request to attend an incident, with details on the screen in front of them that will navigate then to where they need to go, send and receive data, look at information regarding surrounding infrastructure.”

This full integration, following its introduction in Limerick in August, is followed by Castlebar and finally the East Region.

“If it wasn’t for COVID-19, we would probably be on the system already,” A/C/F/O Moody says, “but we hope to be able to turn the system live by Quarter 1 of 2022.”

BENEFITS

The benefits to the Control Centre, he says, will be instantaneous. “At the moment we have a system that works very well, but it is old tech, and the next generation will see that for example, when an operator answers a call, they can get a precise location within ten seconds. That’s a huge benefit to call takers. Our address and postcode system is seen internationally as one of the most difficult to navigate, and we do sometimes have problems getting exact addresses, but the new system is designed to take accurate info from the calling phone and put it up on the screen for us.

“One error in an Eircode can give you a completely different address, it bears no relation to the actual address. We do have systems that can identify location based on the

“I have to say it is one of the hardest things I have had to do. But from the moment we did introduce the new call signs, we have had tremendous support at all levels from all stations”

phone, but they are not integrated. The new system will put it all together in one system so you can get all the information you need in one place. That will be extremely useful.

“We have wide area communications that are managed by the Control Centre, and then we have fireground communications that goes on between crews at an incident. While they are both standalone, we are partaking in a programme that is looking at introducing digital UHF, moving all our radio traffic on to digital platforms.”

The importance and benefits come on many different levels but resilience and integration are the key components, A/C/F/O Moody tells me. “It is a very resilient network. It is proven. Aging tech can lead to data loss but the digital system is very robust. Its ability to integrate with other systems is very important to us too. Also, there is the ability to have appliances from all over the country communicating with each other, as well as the ability to communicate with other emergency services such as gardai, HSE and coast guard, who are all on TETRA, in the case of a major emergency.”

The feedback has been very positive on all fronts, A/C/F/O Moody tells me, saying staff have welcomed the transition to a more resilient platform, but what was a more difficult sell was the decision to undertake a Call Sign transition, which meant moving from traditional station- and vehicle-based call signs to a national model.

CALL SIGNS

“While the migration is probably the biggest technical development in years, changing call signs is actually much bigger than that,” A/C/F/O Moody explains. “This was a very emotive issue. Moving to the national call sign model in tandem with the transition to TETRA, as a combination, was the biggest change initiative we have seen in years. For our personnel, there were fears of a loss of identity, and being consumed by a national model. Every fire station has a name and number, and every vehicle has its own call sign, and our firefighters have felt very connected to these identifiers. Our personnel associate themselves with these call signs, and it is embedded in them from their recruit days…

“… So we decided to change all of that, and that was probably one of the biggest organisational challenges we have undertaken in many years. Some people were unhappy about it, understandably.”

When I mention that I wouldn’t want to be the person who had to break the news, A/C/F/O Moody tells me: “Yes,

The Training Team, Left to Right, Stephen Cleary, Gary Williams, Ciaran Wilson. that was me. I have to say it is one of the hardest things I have had to do. But from the moment we introduced the new call signs, we have had tremendous support at all levels from all stations, and this helped us successfully introduce these new call signs in tandem with the new TETRA technology, two major changes rolled into one.” This double change has been of huge importance. “We now have the call signs aligned with the national model so when we move on to the new TETRA-supported CAD system, our call signs will be the same format as all others on a national level, which is a very important step. The national call signs have been in operation for many years but for some reason weren’t taken on by DFB, and so what you end up with is a CAD system that is a single system operating across three centres, but the call takers in two of those centres would have no familiarisation with the DFB call signs. “Those call signs tell you everything you need to know about the vehicle – what station, what county, what type of vehicle. But with different call signs people would have no idea of those details, so there would be an anomaly there that is now gone. “Considering the size and scope of the project, everything has been very efficient. It has all been very positively taken on board. Every single element has been very successful – planning, training, migration, new call signs - it was a monumental achievement to get all of this in place, and it is important to acknowledge the work of all the people who helped to make it happen, and the efforts of all staff in adopting new technology and call signs. “From my point of view, ever since we started this project, the level of support has been incredible, from my own team, from logistics, from TETRA. However, the migration to TETRA so far is just one part, and next year we will really get to see the full range of capabilities on the new system, so it is looking good for the future.”