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Reach
Issue 6 2014
Empowering staff to
make informed decisions
O
ne of the key requirements
for building a successful
business relationship is
the ability to listen to customers,
understand their needs, and deliver
products that meet those needs.
A prime example of this is the
work carried out by the Airwave
SmartWorld Applications Team
to enhance the Insite web-based
management and reporting tool
to address speci c requests from
Thames Valley Police.
The new Insite dashboard, launched
in 2013, has been developed to enable
control rooms to dynamically adjust
their resources depending on the
workload, in real time.
A typical Police control room
has two speci c areas of activity
– one group of people take the
incoming calls using the standard
telephone service, and a different
group uses the Airwave Service to
manage the dispatch and allocation
of of cers to incidents.
For the incoming calls, the
commercial telephony system is
designed to provide statistics on
how many calls are coming in, the
time taken to answer the calls, length
of call and so on. This means that
managers can see an overview of
how busy the staff are, and provide
additional support if necessary.
The dispatchers using the Airwave
Service, however, did not have a
system that monitored their workload
in real time, which can be high
pressure and very demanding.
Airwave Product Manager Ben
Pattison said: “We were asked
whether the Insite tool, which Thames
Valley Police already use, could
be enhanced to provide a single
pre-con gured view of talk-group
occupancy for the control room
dispatchers. Could Insite tell the
control room managers how busy
each talk-group was in real time, so
workloads could be balanced?
“The answer was yes, and
Sonny Winston of Airwave’s
Business Intelligence Team led the
development of the Insite dashboard
and delivered in just six weeks. It has
been incorporated into the Thames
Valley Police control rooms, and
initial trials have shown that the new
dashboard is playing a key role in
prioritising staf ng levels. The intuitive
display of information means that
control room supervisors can identify
trends and react accordingly.”
With the new dashboard, control
room operators can view talk-group
activity via an easy-to-understand
traf c light display – red, amber and
green – to ensure visibility of where
the pressure is beginning to build.
“A key element of the new Insite
dashboard is the simplicity of the
design, as it empowers control room
staff to make informed decisions
quickly by simply viewing large
plasma screens,” said Paul Feazey,
Airwave Manager, Thames Valley
Police. “We already use many of the
Insite reports for the management of
operations and events, but this is the
rst report designed speci cally for
use in the control rooms.
“With the dashboard report
information, we can now switch
staff between staf ng telephony
calls and dispatching using the
Airwave Service. This means
that we have more exibility to
adjust our resourcing, which is
particularly important as often the
peaks of demand for call takers
and dispatchers are not directly
linked. Now we can make sure
that people are deployed where
they are most effective.”
The new Insite dashboard also
enables dispatchers to monitor
the general use of the talk-groups,
and ensure that routine chat is not
impacting priority messages.
“The dashboard is now rmly
embedded in the control rooms,
and is an accepted part of our
processes and procedures,” said
Sara McDougall, Operations Manager
for Thames Valley Police. “Its value is
recognised both by the management,
and the control room staff who
appreciate that the extra information
available enables the supervisors
to balance workload between the
different roles.”
