PAV customers> Sussex Ambulance Service

Emergency service relies on PAV for secure, fault-tolerant communications.

Business Background
The Sussex Ambulance Service provides emergency ambulance, and non emergency patient transport services to the populations of East and West Sussex. The service has its headquarters in Lewes and has a further 25 stations through the county from which it deploys almost 300 vehicles of all types.

Requirement – Improved network performance
We were approached by Sussex Ambulance Service to replace the switch infrastructure of their Command and Control network to provide improved reliability and speed. We were required to design and critically, to implement the upgrade with the least possible impact on the operational status of this vital emergency service.

PAV Solution
Working closely with the Sussex Ambulance Service IT team, who spent some time at our Sayers Common offices, we designed a new ‘no-point-of-failure’, fault-tolerant system. And in addition to rigorously testing the new configuration, we conducted extensive pre-installation planning, knowing we would have a very small time ‘window’ in which to get the system up and running without interrupting the county’s emergency ambulance service. We replaced the existing CISCO switch infrastructure with a new 3COM XRN switch network which has two critically important benefits for command and control functions; its no-point-of-failure design ensures the resilience of the accident and emergency system, and it offers much improved data performance across the network.

For the installation, we were advised by the Ambulance Service of the quietest period in which we could work and in the event, PAV engineers completed the entire changeover operation overnight. The service was up and running well in advance of the morning’s emergency call activity.

Outcome
This new switch infrastructure, fully supported by a PAV i.t. agreement, is providing this vital emergency service with a robust and highly effective command and control communications system.