Client: Lawrence Township Police Department | Lawrence, NJ
The Challenge
The Lawrence Township Police Department desired a managed services approach to staff their police communications center. The goal was to gain more police officer time in the field. Police officers were manning the center to backfill vacancies. In addition, the Lawrence PD believed that a managed services approach would significantly decrease the Town’s long-term pension and healthcare costs over their current methodology of using unionized civilian workers.
The Department found itself understaffed in its communications center by approximately three full-time employees. They were managing this shortage, estimated at more than 6,000 man-hours per year, by back-filling the communications center staff with on-duty police officers. When this occurred, the officer’s position in the field became vacant, thus reducing service levels to the community.
Their goal was to move to a managed services approach that increased the number of civilian telecommunicators and eliminated the need to assign police officers inside of the communications center. They would also gain financial predictability, lower operational costs, increase the service level to their citizens, improve operational efficiencies and put more police officers on the street without having to hire new officers.
Our Approach
IXP used its considerable experience delivering emergency communications center managed services to develop a tailored dispatch solution that would reduce recurring and one-time costs to the township, improve the level of 9-1-1 services provided to the public, and relieve police officers of their communication center responsibilities.
IXP recruited, hired, and trained nine full-time and five part-time Telecommunicators to staff the Lawrence center 7×24 based on a workload-based model. All staff are NJ and APCO certified Telecommunicators and Emergency Medical Dispatchers and CPR trained.
The Solution
Over the 5-year contract period, IXP Corporation’s managed services staffing model will provide approximately 1.1 million dollars in savings and long-term financial predictability for Lawrence Township. The savings realized by moving to a Managed Services model returned approximately 6,000 police officer manhours back to policing duties.
Additionally, IXP provided a complete technology and facilities refreshment assessment of their 9-1-1 center environment inclusive of a gap analysis of the current state of telephony, CAD/RMS, radio, electrical, and HVAC requirements needed to improve and expand operations into a regional 9-1-1 center.
IXP Corporation is providing a long-term solution to Lawrence Township that realizes considerable cost savings and service level improvements for both the community and the police department. In the prior environment, Communications Center staffing impacted police officer availability and caused service levels to fluctuate in both areas due to police officers having to backfill dispatchers.
IXP implemented a managed services solution that delivered the desired staffing levels in the Communications Center and removed the requirement of having police officers in the Center. Customer service levels have continued to improve for the citizens of Lawrence Township from the services provided by the Emergency Communications Center, and the increased number of police officers on patrol.
Service levels also continue to improve by providing ongoing training to emergency communications center employees. Staffing levels have been set in the Communications Center to ensure that time will be available to provide employees with ongoing in-service and continuing education opportunities. This ensures that personnel are well-trained, and are provided with career growth and development opportunities.
Read about IXP’s value proposition to Lawrence Township in the League of Municipalities article.