Survitec Group has won a major contract with the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) to service all the lifejackets used at MCA bases throughout the United Kingdom.

The three-year contract covers both Survitec’s own Crewsaver branded lifejackets as well as other jackets supplied to the MCA by Baltic and Mullion. The products vary in age but all require an annual service.  Under the terms of the contract, service fees will be fixed for two years, after which there will be a review.

Although Survitec has been contracted to service the MCA’s lifejackets for several years, the company won the business again on the back of a highly competitive tender. Survitec’s UK services business has lifejacket service stations at key locations across the country so it can provide a local service for drop off, servicing and collection while offering the logistical support, efficiency and competitive pricing that comes with being a major player in the marine safety market. All routine lifejacket service work is normally carried out within seven working days.

Richard Robinson, National Marine Sales Manager for Survitec’s UK services business, said, “We are very pleased to win this contract.  For many years the MCA has been a great customer of ours and we value our business relationship. The MCA’s operations cover the length and breadth of the UK and their teams of coastguard officers, surveyors and inspectors require a large number of lifejackets, whether working onboard ships, on the water or port side.  We expect to service approximately 3690 units per year.”

For further information on Survitec’s UK services business click here

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Registration for the UK’s leading exhibition and conference for the emergency services is now open. Bookmark The Emergency Services Show 2012 website http://www.emergencyuk.com now and visit the site to sign up and register for free attendance to the exhibition. This year’s show will take place on Wednesday 21 and Thursday 22 November at Stoneleigh Park, Coventry.

Last year’s Emergency Services Show and Conference attracted over 4400 visitors and 2012 will look to continue building on the success of previous years. The two-day event promotes multi-agency collaboration and interoperability by bringing together everyone involved in an emergency – from the strategic planners and first responders, to the manufacturers and suppliers of equipment and services used by these leading professionals.

Great place to meet

Commenting on last year’s exhibition, Richard Lush from 1st Response Medical Services Ltd, said, “The Emergency Services Show brings together a great collection of the country’s leading suppliers to showcase current and new products. It’s a great place to meet suppliers, forge new relationships and see what’s new and improved.”

John Bradley MBE, Fleet Manager, Hampshire Constabulary, said the show is, “An excellent event that encompasses a number of emergency services and equipment suppliers under one roof. This event has evolved over the years to be one of the ‘not to be missed’ annual events.”

Free to attend

The exhibition is free to attend for emergency services personnel – anyone involved in emergency planning, response or recovery in the UK and abroad, giving them the opportunity to share information and best practice for emergency personnel, planning officers and resilience professionals to work together in the future. The two-day event is open to all Category 1 and 2 Responders and is key for those with a role in operations, procurement, training, recruitment and emergency planning.

Why attend?

The exhibition and its conference provide access to technology, ideas and initiatives focused on improving public safety, protecting the environment and the critical national infrastructure. With over 400 exhibitors to see, this year’s meeting place for emergency services professionals will be bigger than ever before.

Some of the biggest market leaders will be on display at this year’s exhibition, offering a plethora of the latest products for visitors to see and try out for themselves, including products related to civil resilience, search and rescue, extrication, first response, communications, IT, protective clothing and uniforms, vehicles and fleet, vehicle equipment, training, community safety, station facilities, water rescue and medical supplies.

The exhibition will feature three indoor halls and an outdoor exhibition area giving visitors the chance to meet specialist product and service suppliers. Companies new to the show this year include: TBI-LUG Europa, E-Semble, Tiger Tools, Mammut UK, Tencate, Delta Fire, Texport, Lewis Medical Supplies, Flame Pro, English Braids, ARCO, YKK, Indicomm Global, ABC McIntosh, Mecmesin, Panasonic Toughbook, Babcock Emergency Services Training, Honda, Step Access, Firemain Engineering, Andreas Stihl and Electrosonic, to name but a few.

The show’s Emergency Response Zone will once again feature exhibitors from police, fire and rescue, ambulance, professional, government and voluntary organisations from around the UK. This area demonstrates to visitors the capabilities of partnering agencies and the voluntary sector.

Live demonstrations at the show will also provide a unique opportunity to see the latest equipment in action – in 2011 the show featured a public order water cannon from the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Expect more surprises at this year’s show.

Visitor registration is now live on the show’s new look website for more information.

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Dyfed-Powys Police has selected APD Communications and Cisco to update its Emergency Contact Centre. The main components of the solution are APD’s CORTEX Software Integrated Communications Control Solution (ICCS) and Cisco’s Unified Contact Centre Enterprise (UCCE) solution.

This solution refreshes the control centre system and provides significantly increased resilience and intelligent routing of emergency and non-emergency calls; essential for the force to realise their planned resilience and efficiency gains in call handling. Cisco’s tradition as a leader in the telephony arena and APD’s innovative work in the mission critical contact centre market ensures emergency services are guaranteed best of breed telephony and contact centre solutions, providing both users and citizens with efficient and cost effective ways of working.

APD’s CORTEX ICCS is in daily use in over 40 police control rooms across the UK, as well as national systems throughout Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. CORTEX merges TETRA radio dispatch, emergency and non-emergency telephone call handling, access control, video monitoring and much more into a single user friendly touchscreen interface and is relied on by critical communications users and the emergency services to answer 999 calls and despatch resources to incidents.

Mark Hall, IS & T Networks Manager at Dyfed Powys, said, “Working alongside APD makes this type of upgrade easy; we have the same work ethic and the project has been carried out smoothly and with very little disruption to the day to day running of the control room. Dyfed Powys Police will benefit from greater functionality, as well as increased resilience and efficiency – thus significantly enhancing the service offered to the public.”

Jonathan Hamill, Sales & Marketing Director at APD Communications, commented, “APD has enjoyed a long and privileged relationship with the emergency services within the UK and in particular with Dyfed-Powys Police. Our strategic alliance with Cisco enables us jointly to deliver best in breed emergency contact centre solutions and further positions APD as a market leader. Police finances are under pressure and the requirement exists for increased resilience and efficient working practice and we are delighted to be in a position to respond to deliver a best in breed solution to Dyfed-Powys Police and the community it serves.”

APD is responsible for the CORTEX to Cisco integration, which includes full support for Cisco’s ACD (Automatic Caller Distribution) solution, which will ensure 999 calls are routed to skilled operators as quickly as possible.

APD’s CORTEX ICCS is totally software-based, creating a clear differential between APD and its competitors. The inherently resilient distributed architecture of CORTEX has enabled APD to design an integration with Cisco that makes CORTEX the only ICCS in the world to be officially approved by CISCO’s stringent A2Q (Acceptance to Quality) assessors to handle emergency calls via a Cisco telephony platform.

For more information please visit the APD website

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West Midlands Ambulance Service has signed a contract to deploy Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 to its entire organisation to aid better communications and streamline processes. This is the first Microsoft Cloud deal to be transacted under the UK Government’s G-Cloud’s Framework and one of the first to be secured overall from any supplier.

West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) has recently grown to over 4000 staff, providing emergency medical care to a population of around five million people. The unification of several services meant WMAS had various IT systems in operation, making it challenging for staff to communicate and collaborate effectively due to the lack of standardisation. With no common e-mail platform, staff did not have a consolidated e-mail address book with which to locate colleagues easily around the whole region, and using different systems resulted in a lack of version control and increasing storage demands.

By moving to the cloud, West Midlands Ambulance Service will simplify communications and enable staff to collaborate more easily. As well as using Microsoft Office 365, WMAS is also implementing SharePoint 2010 for document management, utilising the built-in version control and collaboration features.

WMAS realise the benefits in hosting core services in the cloud and recognise equally the need to innovate as well as consolidate. The IM&T department saw the benefits in deploying Office 365 as a collaborative solution going beyond replacing a mail platform or document management. Phil Collins (right), Head of IM&T, said, “We needed to consolidate our systems and get everybody onto a common platform as quickly and easily as possible. We knew that moving to the cloud would help us overcome these problems, but we also needed to ensure we maintained the highest level of security around our patient data. IMGROUP gave us the ability to combine cloud services with our on-premise applications, delivering exactly what we needed.”

IMGROUP, an information management specialist and part of the G-Cloud Supplier Community, supplied WMAS with the solution to fit its needs. Marcel Bonfrer, Head of Office 365 Sales at IMGROUP, said, “Our hybrid approach means we can help large organisations maximise the benefit from cloud services in a risk-free manner. Many public sector organisations, who are struggling with the alchemy of how to do more with less, see their IT budgets eaten up with maintaining existing systems. Cloud computing is an opportunity to redress these numbers, allowing these organisations to innovate and drive change.”

Mark Smith, Director of Healthcare, Life Sciences & Health Solutions Group, Microsoft UK, says, “This is a great example of how organisations can leverage the power of the cloud to streamline business processes, while delivering scalable, high performance solutions. Office 365, delivered by IMGROUP, will enable West Midlands Ambulance Service to embrace the power of Microsoft Cloud Services and provide it with a platform for the future.”

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