Case Histories › Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service

Fire station activated and crews called at the touch of a button

Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service serves a 650-square-mile area of towns and countryside with a predominantly retained firefighter workforce who respond to 10,000 incidents per year.
Fast and reliable communications can spell the difference between life and death for fire victims and when systems failures can result from something as simple as a cable fault, effective back-up is absolutely essential. That's why the Oxfordshire brigade has installed a new Message Buttons system to control all of its 24 fire stations as a high speed, reliable tertiary mobilisation method when its primary and secondary command and control systems fail. Functions range from activation of turnout systems in stations, to alerting firefighter crews, remote control of appliance bay doors and switching on lights and systems to prepare the station for the arrival of crews.

Problem

"Previously we would have to alert each station individually with a wide area pager which did not differentiate between crews,” said technical communications officer Pete MacKay. “It would take several minutes to dial the number, enter a pin code and wait for it to go through and there was no indication if it had worked.”

Solution

“With the Message Buttons system, it takes seconds and we get an acknowledgement back that the message has got through. Importantly from a health and safety point of view it enables us to make the station as safe as possible for the responding personnel by activating lights and warning systems at individual stations which was never possible before when turning out via our tertiary system.”

"We saw the Message Buttons system at the BAPCO exhibition in 2005 and realised its potential. We have been testing it in our 'demo fire station' with 16 buttons, but we knew immediately we would have to have at least 72 buttons to achieve what we needed." Autopage worked with the command and control room at brigade headquarters at Kidlington to customise the system so it could be rolled out countywide.

"The Message Buttons vastly improve the speed with which we can alert fire crews, we get an acknowledgement of the alert and we have the functionality of being able to add to the system,"

Buttons are displayed on screen in the command room as brightly coloured boxes with simple, easy to read descriptions. Up to 108 buttons can be shown, regardless of screen resolution. Colours, recipients, pre-set messages and groups can be changed as required and the system is compatible with all normal PC screens and most touch screens.

Oxfordshire Fire & Rescue Service uses four buttons for each station. The first controls remote systems, activating bells and lights. Two others activate equipment such as pagers to call out fire crews, differentiating between which crew was required to save on un-necessary disturbance, while the fourth button is an ISDN reset button, which enables the remote re-setting systems if there has been a thunder storm or electrical fault.

"The fourth button alone will save us a lot of down-time and mileage expenditure. After a thunderstorm we might have to re-set three or four stations manually and someone from the communications department would have to drive to each station to flick the power switch. Now we do it with the touch of a button from our desks," Pete MacKay said.

"The whole system is very resilient. It is reliable and very easy to use which in times of control room failure or industrial dispute allows us to maintain business as usual. Above all, the speed with which we can get the fire crews out is vastly improved, saving vital time in responding to incidents."