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Issue 7 2014
Lambeth, south London, to find out
how successful Airwave Max has
been for them.
“The implementation of Airwave
Max came about for various
reasons,” said Vic. “One of these
was that the Department of
Information noticed that some police
officers on the street were unaware
of some of the capabilities of their
into the control room for some
information and the operator remains
silent when researching for example,
the Police National Computer (PNC).
After ten seconds of silence, the call
cuts out all together and the officer
needs to PTP the control room again.
It is a national timer, which has been
previously set and agreed with all the
emergency services. We had hoped
to extend the time limit as we know
it is a practical problem for operators
when they are doing research. For
various reasons we haven’t been
successful, but it was important to
get that message out to our users,
and Airwave’s EUE team played a big
role in communicating that. Instead,
we came up with some advice for
the control room operators: keep
pushing the foot pedal, or the
operator can simply tell the officer
that he needs to do some research
and will PTP him when he has the
information available.
“Airwave’s EUE team also
demonstrated some shortcuts in
using the terminals, which some
of the officers had never been
taught. One example was the change
in the programming of the radios
to remove the backlight. It is really
a one-button press to put the light
back on, but if you don’t know it
can be frustrating and officers were
reporting that their radios were faulty.
Now through implementing Airwave
Max we have seen a marked
decrease in operational officers
making complaints.”
The MPS has been working with
Airwave’s EUE team since December
last year.
“The face to face briefings
conducted by the EUE team have
contributed to the overall success
of the implementation of Airwave
Max,” said Vic. “The successes can
also be attributed to implementing
a system which uses the existing
technology in a more efficient
manner, releasing talk group air
time for operational use.
“Reviews and feedback have
identified that officers now have
a greater knowledge of Gateway
and the emergency button. They
are using PTP more, diverting
unnecessary radio activity away
from the main talk group. Officers
can more easily make important
Airwave worked with the MPS to produce
a compact, user-friendly guide for police
officers to use as a quick reference on radio
features – see extract below:
Emergency button
Antenna
Signal
indicator
display
Volume
change
control
Radio
micro
phone
Telephone
loud
speaker
PTT
(press
to talk)
LCD
screen
Clear
emergency
Navigation
keys
On/off
mode
button
also end
call and
cancel key
Green
call and
confirm
key
12 key
alpha-
numeric
keypad
and
softkeys Private speaker button
Telephone
microphone
Airwave terminals. Airwave Max is
designed to increase the knowledge
of the officers, increase the call
backs and reduce the occupancy
on the support channels and also to
improve our radio transmission (RT)
procedure which would also have an
impact of reducing occupancy levels
on the talk groups.
“When we rolled out Airwave Max,
it was done so under budgetary
constraints, so Airwave’s End
User Engagement (EUE) team
has helped to bolster our briefing
team in getting the knowledge
out there. The Airwave Max trial
has been embedded in three
boroughs, Newham, Westminster
and Southwark. This in itself was a
challenge due to the need to brief
both Command and Control staff
along with all the respective borough
operational teams who rely on their
radios to do their job, all of whom
work 24-hour shift patterns.”
“It is difficult to target them all, so
we worked with Airwave pre-trial to
prepare a timetable (implementation
plan) of how we would set out to
meet as many of the officers as
possible over a three-week period.”
“As the tactical lead for Airwave
Max, I asked Airwave’s EUE team
to attend the trial boroughs and meet
with operational police officers with
a view to reinforcing and reminding
officers about the functionality
of their Airwave handsets. Our
programme focuses primarily on
the use of the emergency button,
Airwave Gateway and point-to-point
(PTP) calls. The EUE team then
worked to cascade the Airwave
Max briefings to more operational
officers than would otherwise
have been possible.
“In some cases, officers were
unaware of Gateway, but were
frustrated when they lost their radio
signal, for example in underground
car parks or large buildings where
Airwave coverage has not been
specified. With Airwave’s EUE
team, we have been briefing
officers on how the system works
and the benefits of pressing the
Gateway button.
“We had also previously identified
a few challenges. One of these is the
inactivated timer, which becomes
a problem when an officer calls
