Sandra Wendelken, strategy and insights manager recently had the pleasure of speaking with public safety and education officials from Ludlow, Massachusetts. Ludlow is a suburb of Springfield, Massachusetts, with a population of about 22,000 citizens located across the Chicopee River from Springfield in Hampden County.
In the past the Ludlow Fire Department firefighters and Ludlow Police Department officers were experiencing blackouts and areas with poor coverage. The fire department communicated on a VHF system using two repeaters to attempt to cover dead spots. The police department operated on a UHF network and often experienced spotty coverage along the I-90 turnpike area. During one 2016 arrest, a suspect fled from a job site and when the suspect was found an hour later, the arresting sergeant's radio was not receiving a signal. The dangerous situation was a catalyst for a plan to upgrade the city's public safety communications system to Project 25 Phase 2 technology.
The town then hired ACD Telecom as its consultant for the network upgrade and released a request for proposals (RFP). Because of the concerns for Ludlow personnel safety due to the spotty coverage of the former communications systems, the town approved a municipality bond to fund the project. A town committee was formed with various members tackling political, logistics, and legal aspects of the planned system upgrade.
Marcus Communications, a local critical communications provider, won the 2020 contract that included Tait Communications P25 Phase 2 equipment. A Communications System Committee was formed to oversee the implementation of the new $4.8 million town-wide radio communications system for all departments. In 2021, Marcus won a 10-year contract to support the system.
The Solution
The P25 Phase 2 radio communications technology is unique in the area and offers the town more capacity. In addition to the new equipment, the winning bid included establishing two new towers, one of which was sited near Westover Air Force Base. The second tower was near the city's sports field, which required land use approvals and construction.
The system includes a microwave network, and a unique hub and spoke design that offers redundancy. The town has two primary PSAPs with three alternate positions. Along with the radio network, the town upgraded the dispatch equipment with new Avtec consoles including integration with state 9-1-1 officials.
To ensure the new system offered the required coverage, representatives from ACD Telecom, Marcus Communications, and the town of Ludlow, walked the entire jurisdiction in quarter-mile grids. The team evaluated radio attenuation using sets of words specified by the consultant, with three different radio users noting whether they got the message. More than 95% of the bounded area of the town and specific buildings in the town met and exceeded the RFP requirements.
In addition to fire and police, the town's EMS provider, Department of Public Works, community center, and school district operate on the P25 system. The town's telecommunicators can talk to other agencies outside the Ludlow system. Other communities that do not have P25 Phase 2 radio communications can share county channels, enabling agencies to talk to each other.
Tait EnableInsight provides real-time network insight and transparency to critical system measures and performance metrics. Marcus Communications can easily access the dashboard style information for network monitoring.
"Our daily and incident communications have been excellent with this system," says Ludlow Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Ryan Pease. "People do not like change, but we have not had one complaint since we deployed this network."
School Interoperability
The town's five schools operate a DMR network with about 200 radios in use, and its mobile stations can access the P25 trunked system. Each of the town's five schools has a P25 radio and base station in the main office of each building. There is a repeater at the high school, with separate channels for each building. The schools can also access a town-wide channel and a direct-to-dispatch center channel. The trunked P25 and DMR networks are tied to the system's console system.
"We have monthly safety meetings with police, fire and our district administration team," says Michael Assaf, director of information communication technology for Ludlow Public Schools. "We have a great working collaboration with both fire/EMS and police, and we test our radio connectivity twice a school year with dispatch. This project has been a wonderful upgrade and addition to our security and safety suite of tools we use."
Ludlow Public Schools have had at least four incidents this school year where direct to dispatch was used on radios for issues including a broken ankle on an athletic field where ambulance services were dispatched.
"The radios have been excellent, Assaf says. "The speed and effectiveness of the radios surpasses the use of phone calling when dealing with quick-as-possible response and support times."
Challenges and Coordination
During construction of the second new tower at the sports field, the team established foundations for the tower. The area at one time had been used for wastewater treatment. Although the town plans showed no active sewage infrastructure, there was in fact a million-gallon active sewer running just adjacent to the tower site. The drill crew tasked with the tower footings just missed this sewer, but tower construction is rarely an easy task.
No project is flawless but coordination among all the town's stakeholders ensured success for Ludlow. "It was a group effort," says Ludlow Police Chief Daniel Valadas. "Our town, when it comes to public safety, nobody was divided. We all worked together."
It was a pleasure to learn more about the Ludlow system. The officials plan to trial the new Tait TP9900 multiband, multiprotocol portable radios to allow users of the school’s DMR network to communicate directly with the public safety officials on the P25 network. The system is benefiting communications among public safety officials, and Tait Communications is proud to be the town’s vendor of choice.
Blog authored by: Sandra Wendelken – Strategy and Insights Manager, Tait Communications
Read the previous Tait Talks - Interoperability Takes Center Stage at APCO 2024
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