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SECTION B — FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE POLICY their firefighters. A proper command and control function was not included in the specifications for FiReControl. 20) At a FiReControl workshop at the BAPCO conference on 22 April 2009 concerns were openly acknowledged. A very senior advisor to EADS on FiReControl faced a number of probing questions from FRS control officers who raised the issue of command and control at incidents. 21) EADS made clear the system being provided to RCCs was call-taking and mobilising, with some limited incident monitoring because those were the contract specifications. There is NO command and control function, “it is not part of the specifications”. 22) The contract specifications, he said, meant that at incidents officers would have laptops or MDTs and apart from that they would be “on their own”. The EADS advisor said it was only now that FRSs were starting to realise the lack of a command and control function in the contract specifications for the RCC technology and there needed to be “debate” about what happens. 23) Our clear understanding is that on this point the contractors delivered to the specifications demanded of them. This serious omission was made by those who set out the contract specifications. 24) The issue is not fully resolved and is of grave concern. At the very least, remedial work causing further delays and costs will have to be undertaken and a whole new area of “out of scope” work has been identified. 25) It has significant implications for the staffing model, the technology, cost and delays. In our view this played a very significant role in the further delays which have emerged and at least some of the additional costs which have arisen as a result. 26) The matter of how command and control is maintained in a practical sense with the breaking of the link between local FRSs and their local emergency controls is still not resolved. In answer to a parliamentary question from John McDonnell MP about the transfer of operational command and control arrangements to regional controls the fire minister Shahid Malik replied: “The responsibility for operational command and control will remain, as is now, with local fire and rescue services”. Unproven technology, under-development 27) Until recently the proposed mobilising system from Ericsson – CoordCom – had never been deployed in the UK fire service market. To state that it was proven off-the-shelf technology was misleading and inaccurate. 28) It is also worth noting that the FiReControl updates contain 2 items which are “to be costed by EADS” relating to mobilising officers and dynamic mobilising, both standard features in existing suppliers’ systems. This again indicates that the original system specifications would be functionally less than the systems currently in use in some areas. 29) It has now publicly emerged that Ericsson is to be dropped altogether in favour of Intergraph I/CAD as a mobilising system. Intergraph I/CAD has been tried and tested and failed in the UK fire service. 30) In the proposed Cleveland tri-centre tests, Intergraph I/CAD failed. In any event, no system has been tried and tested in a national network of regional fire service controls, as none exists anywhere in the world. 31) We anticipate the FiReControl specification may be more demanding than those specified a few years ago and we will need some convincing that a product – albeit an updated version – which failed a lesser test can now succeed in a more demanding one. 32) We anticipate knock-on effects including potentially on DCMT1 and DCMT2 which we mention later in this submission. This may lead to further delays. Resilience 33) Another major feature cited as essential was that of resilience. The choice of nine different systems does not in itself guarantee resilience, neither does 46 systems. The system architecture chosen by CLG for nine systems is then compromised further by only having three data centres, all of which are housed within three of the existing controls. 34) Currently to render the FRS in England inoperable a considerable number of FRSs would have to fail or be taken out by terrorist attack (as well as their back-up facilities). Under the new scheme taking out the three data centres will render the whole RCC infrastructure unusable. 35) Without the data centres then the Gazetteer options become unusable and dispatching impossible for such large areas. Current localised systems, even without Gazetteers, can mobilise with area knowledge to generate responses to an emergency situation. 36) The call-handling capacity is appallingly low because of very low staffing numbers. As a result individual RCCs will hit spate conditions much more quickly. 37) At times the national network will have very, very low numbers of staff on duty – less than 60. The entire national system could hit spate conditions when several RCCs hit spate conditions at the same time. This would happen during, for example, widespread weather events such as flooding or widespread snowfalls. Database generation 38) The current proposal is utilising the NLPG dataset. This is meant to be another benefit of the proposed RCCS. 39) This is utilised by many organisations and is a substantial database for mobilising. However it is somewhat different to the databases that FRS currently use. Many FRSs have started to switch their existing systems to use the NLPG database and are finding out at first hand the problems it poses. 66 FBU Annual <strong>Report</strong> 2011
SECTION B — FIRE AND RESCUE SERVICE POLICY 40) To give some examples: business parks that are currently built generally identify the different premises as Unit 1, Unit 2 etc. This is how these buildings appear in the NLPG database. Once let the building now has a name and may change hands several times even 1 year. These names do not appear on the NLPG database for some considerable time – if ever – and the company name provided will result in no match against the gazetteer when searched by the operator at the RCC. Invariably the unit number will not be given or known and does not form part of the new address. To overcome this each FRS will have to generate an “extra” database containing this information, maintained by them, a not inconsiderable task. 41) Another example is that many towns and cities have areas within them, these areas form part of the address to the local inhabitant. In one FRS there are nine areas in one town which do not exist in the NLPG database, as such every property in those areas will have to become part of a local database for that FRS to allow matching against the supplied address. The only alternatives are to get the NLPG database amended (only allowed through local government request and a lengthy procedure) or to get the residents to change the way they report addresses. It is our belief that it is almost certainly impossible to do either within the timescales involved. 42) There will be many similar examples that will come to light as the database generation continues and practical use of NLPG emerges, these items should have been known and dealt with at the outset. 43) The transfer of information is time consuming and cumbersome. It also has to be provided by FRSs and is out of scope work. DCMT1 and DCMT2 44) These are the toolkits for converting and transferring the FRS’s existing data into a format that EADS can use to link the FRS related data to the NLPG database and also to generate the “extra” databases that contain the entries that do not exist in the NLPG database. 45) Problems with the DCMT1 toolkit became apparent to fire and rescue services in the summer of 2008 and has played a major role in the delays. We understand these problems only became apparent after CLG, as the Project Managers, had signed off the toolkits as meeting the contract specifications and it was then rolled out FRSs. 46) Up to that point CLG at imposed itself as the go-between linking EADS to the FRS. We understand it made a point of ensuring there was little or no direct contact between the contractors and other stakeholders meaning the problems only became apparent after the toolkits had been cleared for release to FRSs. 47) This issue of direct collaboration was addressed – belatedly – in the summer of 2009 with the creation of Solution Establishment Workshops, the first attempt at genuinely collaborative working. But what it highlights is that this was not happening before and only started when the Project ran into serious trouble with delays mounting. 48) The DCMT1 toolkit may now be substantially complete, albeit nearly two years late. Some of the issues have been inexcusable. But in the absence of close contact between EADS and the FRSs – a decision taken by CLG as Project Managers – it was perhaps inevitable. 49) Project Managers should have known that the larger authorities would have enormous data sets and for the initial releases to appear to have problems handling large data sets is ridiculous. The other reported issues show the poor quality systems at Departmental Project Management level that allowed these to get to the end user. 50) Again the Project Management systems and methodology (Prince 2) should have picked these items up and managed them rather than supplying poor quality tools – albeit to specifications agreed and signed off by CLG - within the project life cycle. 51) Switching the mobilising system from Ericcson to Intergraph/ICAD may produce further problems with the DCMT1 toolkit. That remains to be seen. 52) CLG has consistently under-estimated the amount of work needed to be completed by FRSs to identify, cleanse and capture the data even with the toolkit working perfectly. This is at least three to five years of work. 53) There is limited and reducing capacity within the fire service to deliver this quickly – the ability is there, simply not the number of control personnel needed to carry out the task in addition to their existing workloads. 54) Whilst DCMT1 is used to identify what FRS address data is contained within NLPG, and what is not, it is the more complicated DCMT2 that “binds” this information together. Only time will tell whether similar issues will emerge with DCMT2 as did with DCMT1. It is imperative that mobilising arrangements for a life-saving emergency service such as that for the fire and rescue service aren’t changed without being fully validated and tested beforehand. Testing “in the field” is not a professional option to adopt. 55) It would be surprising, given the complexity of the technical challenges, if they did not. There may also be issues relating to the switch to Intergraph I/CAD as the mobilising system. 56) We are aware, given the delay to the roll out of the DCMT1 toolkit, that many FRSs have not completed the work and some are only at the early stages of starting the work relating to the use of DCMT1. Without this data it is difficult to conceive how any meaningful testing of the system can take place. 57) Performance of this system will depend on the volume of data searched and a system that works with a small data set may not even work, or work as well, with a large data set if the hardware is not specified correctly. FBU Annual <strong>Report</strong> 2011 67
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The Fire Brigades Union Executive C
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MICK SHAW President MATT WRACK Gene
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Section D Pensions 91 Section E AIF
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8 FBU Annual Report 2011
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