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ODPM announces shortlist for the FiReControl infrastructure procurement
Mid September saw the formal announcement by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister(ODPM)for the negotiation phase of the FiReControl Infrastructure procurement.The 3 shortlisted suppliers are:EADS Defence and Security Systems Ltd,BT and Thales.
In a press statement,EADS’s said,“This confirms EADS’s recognised competence in the UK public safety market, drawing on global experience and expertise on programmes ranging from the EU-funded OASIS study on cross border multiagency crisis management to integrated national solutions for emergency services’ communications.”
At the time of going to press neither BT nor Thales were available for comment.
FiReControl will be a major transformation for the Fire and Rescue Service, contributing to improved public safety.The project, part of the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure (CNI),will see the restructuring of the existing 46 English brigade based primary stand-alone control rooms to a resilient network of nine (eight+ London) regional control centres (RCCs).Each RCC will be able to seamlessly take over from each other in spate conditions or in the event of the loss of an RCC.
The first seven locations were named during August: Belmont Business Park,Durham; Lingeley Mere Business park,Cheshire; Cambridge Research Park,Cambridge;Willow Farm Business Park, Leicestershire;
Wolverhampton Business Park,Wolverhampton; Paragon Business Village,
West Yorkshire;and Blackbrook Business Park, Somerset. Discussions with developers are being finalised in the South East.London,the ninth,already has an RCC which will be integrated into the national network in time for the Olympics in 2012,ODPM Minister,Jim Fitzpatrick MP stated,“There is a compelling need to modernise and rationalise the control rooms in England, as part of the modernisation agenda.In the post 9/11 world and in the wake of the events of July 7,we need control centres that are resilient enough to deal with a terrorist attack or any natural disaster. London’s recent experience showed that only a regional control centre can deal effectively with an event of that scale particularly in terms of the specialist management required for inter-agency liaison and on-going communications to synchronise plans and deployment when the Fire and Rescue service is not the prime service on the scene.Existing control rooms do a good job,but they are not designed to deal in a co-ordinated manner with major regional or national incidents.”
The contract award for FiReControl is expected to be announced by the ODPM early in 2006.
