16
|
Reach
Issue 6 2014
Creating capacity on dema
the 2014 Commonwealth
L
ondon 2012 demonstrated
the huge amount of planning
involved in ensuring a
successful major event. With
the Commonwealth Games due
to take place in and around the
centre of Glasgow this year, the
Airwave team is already well
into the process of working with
our customer Police Scotland to
configure the relevant Network
sites to provide additional capacity.
Police Scotland is responsible
for policing the Games, and they
will be bringing in officers from
around the country to assist. This
will mean extra loading on sections
of the Network, so Airwave was
asked to increase capacity on 15
specific sites. In addition, two new
sites will be installed, one in the
Athletes’ Village, and one serving
the Scottish Exhibition and
Conference Centre (SECC).
The reconfiguration work meant that
parts of the Network would be offline
for a short period of time. The project
was planned to keep disruption to the
absolute minimum. To ensure Police
Scotland, and the Scottish Ambulance
Service and Scottish Fire and Rescue
Service, who also rely on Airwave,
were kept fully informed about the
work, an engineering conference
bridge and a customer conference
bridge were set up so the status of any
site could be checked at any time.
Before any work started, the
required additional capacity was
calculated by Airwave’s Capacity
and Network Performance Team. The
loading and dimensioning of the sites
is based on several factors, and the
recommendations were presented
to Police Scotland together with full
justifications and cost impact. With
budgets under increasing pressure,
this careful planning ensures that
Police Scotland only pay for the
capacity they need, with no wastage.
Once the reconfigurations were
agreed, the engineering team took
centre stage. To make room for the
additional capacity, 46 Ground Based
Network Resilience (GBNr) sites
and five Air to Ground sites, making
up four GBNr Rings, had to be
reconfigured. This work was to create
extra ‘space’ on the switch that
would support the Commonwealth
Games locations, and was carried out
on sites in some of the most remote
locations on the Network.
