iXP Plans and Manages County of New Castle, DE Communications Center and Data Center Relocation

Sector: County Government
Focus: Communications Center Relocation
Started: 2006

Situation

The County of New Castle, DE engaged iXP to coordinate, plan, and manage the transition of the current Communications Center to a new facility. This included the planning and implementation of the new Communications Center and supporting Data Center. The County secured the assistance of iXP to insure the latest Public Safety trends and standards were being applied to the new Communications Center and Data Center.

For the Emergency Communications Center operations to successfully move into the new facility, all of the inter-related projects must be planned and implemented in a coordinated fashion. A successful move means: a move well planned and coordinated to minimize down time of supporting technologies and with minimal disruption to the Emergency Communications Center operations and the constituents they serve.

Solution

The major components of the project were:

• Implementation of a new 9-1-1 Emergency Telephone system (Positron/Nortel/Verizon)
• Implementation of upgraded radio consoles (Motorola Gold Elite)
• Implementation of centralized time synchronization (SpectraCom Netclock)
• Reviewed responses to Request for Proposals, grading & selection based upon customer requirements and implementation of new console furniture (Wrightline)
• Prepared mock equipped console furniture for implementation of technologies in the new furniture
• Installation of electrical feeds and data cabling through the new furniture
• Implementation of a new Logging/Recording system (NICE/Motorola), which included participating in State wide area network meetings to coordinate connectivity via the State network
• Coordination and move of conventional radios (Delmarva Radio)
• Coordination, acquisition of equipment to minimize down time, and move of three (3) Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) Systems (County, Delaware State Police, Wilmington Fire Department)
• Developed Statements of Work and pricing to County for 3rd party vendors
• Coordination of cabling vendors
• Coordination of network/server equipment between multiple vendor partitions of the data center
• Development and management of transition plan for the move
• Led bi-weekly project status meetings & 3rd party vendor meetings
• Identification and validation of County Systems moving to the new facility
• Created training plan & coordinated new equipment training for all dispatchers prior to move
• Validation of successful testing by all parties before Cut Over can begin

iXP also identified any risk(s) associated with the anticipated move of older technologies and plans/solutions targeted at mitigating as much risk as possible. New Castle County engaged iXP as the "Public Safety" experts/consultants with experience in both Communications Center migrations and standards/best practices in regards to building new facilities.

Results

When all systems were tested and end users trained, the Center was cut over from the old location to the new with no loss of services. iXP also assisted the County in procuring technologies to replace end of life equipment and operate in redundant modes until the cut over was completed. Post move, this legacy equipment was decommissioned so the old facility could be demolished per the County's project schedule.

iXP also explored with the County alternative methods of wide area network connectivity in order to support delivery of data as they removed fire stations.

Value Delivered. Problem Solved.