Voice Radio Project

Here you will find information on the Department of Emergency Services Voice Radio Project

February 14, 2013:  The Chester County Commissioners signed a contract with Harris Corporation for the purchase, installation and maintenance of a new emergency radio system. The contract for purchase, installation and two years of maintenance totals $27.4 million of capital expenditure, with $14.7 million in operating expenditure allocated for maintenance of the system for an additional eight years following installation.  Here's the link to the press release


February 26, 2013:  Voice Radio Project Kick Off Meeting was held.  Here is the link to the Slide Presentation that was given by the Harris Corporation. 

February, 2013 Newsletter

VRP Fact Sheet

March 26, 2013:  The first monthly Face-to-Face meeting was held at the PSTC.  It was well attended with all the emergency responder agencies respresented.  Here are the links to;
    Meeting Slide Presentation
    Work Schedule

 

 

 

 

Chester County DES

 

Policies

 

Policy 100-2        EMS and 9-1-1 Data Release
Policy 100-5        QA Incident Review / Disk Hold
Policy 100-6        Quality Commendation Project
Policy 100-19       Department Good Standing Policy
Policy 100-26       Right-to-Know Document Release
Policy 300-2        Continual Radio Service - 9-1-1 Field Users
Policy 300-3        Comm 1 Non-Emergency Response
Policy 300-6        Dispatch Streams
Policy 300-7        County Agency Radio Purchase
Policy 300-8        Radio Discipline
Policy 400-3        Mass Casualty Units - 9-1-1 Field Providers
Policy 400-8        High Patient Volume (HPV)
Policy 500-1        Communications Equipment - Field Users
                             Maintenance, Replacement, & Organizational Expense
Policy 500-2       Equipment Policy for Privately Owned Vehicles
Policy 500-3        Distribution 800 MHz Radio Equipment for 
                             Chester County Stations
Policy 500-4       Fire / EMS / Police MDC Policy
Policy 500-5        Fire / EMS Pagers
Policy 500-6        FRA Rebanding Time Tracking Procedures
Policy 500-7        Antennas on Mobile and Portable Radios
Policy 600-9       State Homeland Security Program Funding
Policy 900-1        Fire Rescue Hazmat Training
Policy 900-2        Fire Investigation Procedures
Policy 900-3        Fire Investigation Response
Policy 900-5        Qualifications for Fire Inspection 
Policy 900-6       Fire Inspection Fees
Policy 900-7        Fire Inspections
Policy 900-8        Physcial Fire Inspection of County-Owned and/or 
                              Leased Property

 

 

Notice to Fire and EMS Providers - Paging Update

 

 

As you may be aware, there has been an on-going audio quality issue with the Paging System.  Over the last several days, an escalation of the severity of the issue has occurred in the West Chester and Goshen areas.

Update:  The paging issues over the last several days in the West Chester and Goshen areas are resolved.  The paging vendor identified the problem and made corrections during the evening of 2/12/13.  DES has confirmed the corrections with a series of test pages.  We will continue to work with the paging vendor towards a resolution to the ongoing audio quality in general.

 If you are experiencing any change in the audio quality in your area, please report this issue using the Enterprise Wizard program and submitting a System Issue Report giving as many details as possible.

 Technical Engineers are scheduled to arrive at the GSC later this afternoon to begin to diagnose the current issues via testing of the paging system.

 

During the month of July, the Department of Emergency Services processed 23,513 telephone calls; 946 Fire incidents; 3,044 EMS incidents; and 29,472 Police incidents.  We experienced a four-hour failure of the CAD system due to a failed Network Interface Card.  During the outage we operated using our established manual backup system with no issues.

Rebanding Project;  the project is on track to be completed around February, 2014.  On August 28, there will be a “dry run” for the infrastructure cutover to the rebanded frequencies.  During this time, the entire radio operations will be on the backup system.

Voice Radio Project;  the Customer Design Review was completed in June.  Tower acquisition is still a major issue; some sites being more difficult than others.  Some of the present tower sites have failed structural analysis and they are being reviewed to determine the best path forward for these sites.

Computer-Aided Dispatch System (CADs);  We have begun the process of preparing data for transfer from the old CADs to the new system. 

Training Facility;  The site work for the Tactical Village is done.  The bid package for the actual building/prop construction should be released in early September with the award anticipated in November.  Last month the Campus hosted 399 people at 26 events/training.

 

Posted by Chester County Department of Emergency Services.