Whitcom 911 — Case Study

Whitcom Regional Communication Center is a consolidated E-911 dispatch facility that unifies 72 agencies in a three-county area across two states.

Consolidated in 1996, and eventually regionalizing in 2004, Whitcom’s territory includes the cities of Pullman, Washington, in Whitman County, Clarkston, Washington, in Asotin County, and Moscow, Idaho, in Latah County, as well as the campuses of Washington State University and the University of Idaho.

Covering more than 3,000 square miles of rolling hills and wheat fields, what the Whitcom region lacks in constituents – 83,000 at last count – is more than made up for in extreme logistical challenges for emergency responders. Much of the acreage can only be traversed by four-wheel-drive vehicles, and cellular service can be hit-or-miss. Managing all of this are just 26 employees, who rotate through 10 active, multidiscipline workstations at Whitcom’s dispatch center.

For Patti Kelly, the communication center’s director, it was important that a replacement solution offer technological advances to position Whitcom for the future, both from a console and back-end recording standpoint. “When you go to conferences and see what’s on the market, you realize that a product being at the end of its life might be a blessing in disguise.”

Whitcom was already beginning to experience weekly system failures, with no resources available for parts or repairs, so time was of the essence. To further complicate the issue, funding earmarked for the upgrade had an expiration date – allowing just a few months for the selection and installation for certain phases of the new system.

A third integrated component – Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) software from Spillman Technologies^® – provided even greater efficiency, allowing Whitcom to search recorded interactions easily and save valuable time. All solutions integrate seamlessly to provide an easy-to-use call taking, logging, and event reconstruction experience.

Prior to selecting the HigherGround recording solution, Whitcom tried an alternative product which did not meet their expectations. At this point, it became even more critical that the HigherGround solution not only meet all their needs, but that integration was seamless, to meet the now condensed deadline.

HigherGround’s Capture911 system provides Whitcom a complete interaction recording, incident reconstruction, and dispatcher evaluation suite that exceeds current NENA and APCO standards for Next Generation 911 compliance. With Capture911, Whitcom captures 100 percent of their interactions, including telephone, radio, TTY/TTD, and CAD, and has a system that can expand to meet their future requirements.

The HigherGround system was seamlessly deployed, and – more importantly – did not interrupt 911 operations. Since implementing the new system, there have been no system outages or downtime. Kelly said, “The product just works as promised, without any drama. And customer service from HigherGround on the backend has been outstanding.”

Additional features of the Capture911 system include:

• Capture of all audio regardless of source (traditional or trunked radio, as well as circuit-switched or VoIP telephone systems).
• Record interactions and associated metadata, available for immediate playback and incident reconstruction.
• Easy-to-use and easy-to-learn customizable user interface saves valuable time.
• Create dynamic reports with real-time monitoring for dispatcher assessment and training.

Due to challenges of the terrain and mountain top radio systems, knowing the geography and the correct radio repeater selections is critical. Now, with the metadata provided by Avtec, HigherGround is able to capture actual repeater selections chosen by the dispatchers when broadcasting. This tool is crucial for training and incident reconstruction.

This gave Kelly the peace of mind that all radios currently in use – an amalgamation including Motorola, Harris, and others – would be compatible with the new dispatching system. With the portable Scout console Whitcom purchased, which runs on a Windows^® laptop, Kelly’s Emergency Operations Center can offer remote dispatching and troubleshooting during crises. “They were really understanding of our needs, and amazingly flexible,” Kelly said of the Avtec and HigherGround deployment teams.

The Scout console system’s interface offered custom configurability, with touch-screen buttons replicating the function and placement of commands from the legacy system. This allowed Whitcom to deploy the Scout system and legacy Motorola Gold Elite console side-by-side, so dispatchers could make the conversion at their own speed and training time was minimized. Kelly notes, “We were able to adapt our dispatcher’s console screens so the transition was much simpler. If we didn’t like a color, or font, or where the button was, we could make the change easily.”