New $2M dispatch system will revolutionize city’s fire, paramedic services, chief promises

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/05/2019 (2411 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service is getting a new $2-million computer-aided dispatch system the department believes will revolutionize emergency services in the coming years.

In a special meeting Wednesday, the city’s protection, community services and parks committee unanimously voted to approve single-source negotiations with Intergraph Canada Ltd. to purchase the operating system.

WFPS chief John Lane told the councillors on the committee their current computer dispatch system is aging and is in urgent need of an upgrade.

“Our system has worked really well, but it is 25 years old. It’s written in a programming language and there are very few people who have that programming knowledge now. We are the sole client of the vendor,” Lane said.

“That, in itself, raises a liability. Certainly, the vendor has also cautioned it will not be compatible with the requirements of Next Generation 911.”

Next Generation 911 is a federally-mandated effort to upgrade the communication capabilities of emergency services providers.

Winnipeg is expected to begin implementing the initiatives of the Next Generation 911 program in 2021, with various benchmarks set for following years. Lane said that timeline means the department needs to begin working on implementing the new dispatch system right away.

“It is a protocol of requirements governed by the (Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission) nationally and it will make our public safety answering points deal with all the modern communications technology that has emerged, so texts to 911, videos to 911,” Lane said.

“Our contract with our current vendor ends in January 2021. Ideally, we won’t need to extend that any further…. Our hope is, especially given the expertise we already have in the city, the implementation will be finished within 18 months.”

One advantage of the new computer-aided dispatch system is it will be the same one utilized by the Winnipeg Police Service. This is one of the main reasons the committee agreed to a single-source contract.

Having the two agencies on the same platform will help their respective operations work together in a symbiotic way, Lane said.

“We work more closely in alignment with our police service in Winnipeg than just about any other community I’ve ever worked in. So having our (computer-aided dispatch systems) on the same frame, the same system, will really help with that,” he said.

“There are other big advantages for us, and one is the police have used it for quite some time. They have a great deal of in-house expertise and we can use that expertise during the implementation.”

The committee — which is staffed by chairwoman Coun. Sherri Rollins (Fort Rouge-East Fort Garry) and Couns. John Orlikow (River Heights-Fort Garry), Ross Eadie (Mynarski) and Vivian Santos (Point Douglas) — instructed the department to report back on the progress of implementing the new system.

The committee was required to vote on the matter since any single-source negotiations for the department that lead to a contract worth more than $1 million requires its approval.

Lane said the dispatch system will usher in sweeping, positive changes.

“It’s pivotal. The system is one component of our overall emergency communications system that really does absolutely everything from receiving our emergency calls to sending them to our apparatus, to getting them to the call through mapping and traffic pre-emption,” he said.

“And in cases where patients are involved we keep track of the care for those patients, transporting them to hospital, billing. Really, it’s the backbone of the entire service.”

ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @rk_thorpe