|
Aside from
the tourist trade (which brings an estimated 20 million additional
visits per year to the region), there are a number of other factors
that make the department’s incident responses more challenging,
including the size of the area covered (81 square miles), the high
concentration of industry, heavily traveled rail and highway
corridors, and unique natural features like the Niagara River and
gorge.
According to Sue Arbour, Head of Emergency Communications for the
Department, their biggest priority with the new system was control:
“One of the main things that’s important for us is the ability to
control our own data and access configuration and maintenance
functions. With Symposium, the system is fully open and fully
configurable; as a result, we’re able to make changes and access
information as required, without having to go outside the
department.”
In addition to system and data access, Sue said that there were a
number of additional factors that the department found to be
important: “We really wanted a system that had proven itself
elsewhere – our responsibilities are too important to be a beta site
for a new, untested system. As well, we needed guarantees that we
would be able to access our data, and that the system would utilize
standard Windows architecture. Also, we wanted guarantees about our
costs, implementation timeframes, and support – no one wants an
open-ended commitment. We chose Symposium not just because they SAID
they could provide all these things, but because we were able to
verify independently from numerous other departments that they do in
fact deliver.”
Often, changing CAD vendors is not taken lightly, due to the
perception that a lot has been invested in the existing
relationship. According to Sue, this was something that Niagara
Falls thought through and resolved: “Often departments look at how
much money and effort they’ve sunk into a system over 5 or 10 years
and think that by changing they have to start over, and it’s money
down the drain. That’s not the way it is at ALL. Fact is, the money
and effort are already spent regardless, and it’s not coming back.
The REAL question that needs to be asked is how well your current
system and relationship is working, and whether going forward with a
new system and relationship will meet those needs better.”
As part of the installation, the Symposium CAD was integrated with a
number of third-party systems that extend its capabilities and
effectiveness. The integration with Ingenious Software’s FIREPRO™
RMS provides personnel with full transparent real-time access to
critical premise information, as well as providing for automatic
population of incident response information for OFM reporting.
FIREPRO™ is the RMS of choice for an increasing number of Canadian
fire departments, and Ingenious Software has developed a strong
reputation as a responsive and pro-active vendor. As per our
standard approach, Symposium has worked with Ingenious Software to
ensure departments have the ability to use Symposium systems with
their existing FIREPRO™ RMS solution.
Another integration involved Fire Monitoring Technology
International's Inc.'s OPEN ACCESS™ system. OPEN ACCESS™
is a versatile and innovative system which has been used very
successfully by fire departments to improve response times to fires
by an average of two full minutes (validated through independent
testing), and allows any alarm vendor wishing to participate to feed
fire alarm signals directly into the fire department CAD system
without requiring the installation of any additional equipment at
the fire department. Now, thanks to the new interface, fire alarms
received through the OPEN ACCESS™ system at Niagara Falls
automatically generate an incident in the Horizon EME, enabling for
quicker, safer, and more effective notification and response.
Yet a third integration is with the department’s paging system. Now,
critical incident alerts and call information are sent to volunteer
personnel directly from the CAD, via their standard-issue alpha
numeric pagers. Again, the result is a more rapid, safe, and
effective response.
Taken together, these integrations provide a fully coordinated
incident response system that ties together the department’s various
technologies, reflects their unique needs and workflows, and can be
extended in the future to other departments in the region.
Niagara Falls Fire is very well satisfied with the result. As Fire
Chief Pat Burke puts it, “The new Symposium system gives us the
control and capability we wanted plus a whole lot more, delivered by
a company that is customer-focused, committed to doing the job
right, and delivers the goods. Without hesitation, we’re glad we
made the switch.”
As a company, we are quite excited about the Niagara Falls project.
According to Symposium’s Jeff Connors, “This project really does
represent another milestone, in that it continues to show how we
work with departments to make CAD implementation simple,
straightforward, and painless. We’ve built our business on being
responsive and pro-active, and are very proud to be bringing these
same advantages to bear for Niagara Falls.”
|
