Country Fire Service goes digital

South Australia’s Country Fire Service has awarded a $7 million contract to upgrade all of its frontline radios to digital standard.

South Australia’s Country Fire Service will progressively replace its fire ground radios over the next few years with a whole new fleet of Tait mobiles and portables, in a $7 million contract won by local company Tetracom.

“It is good to see the South Australian Government awarding contracts such as this to a South Australian company, as this keeps employment and investment within the state,” says Tetracom’s managing director, Jeff Perry. The company has worked with the emergency services in South Australia for 20 years.

This is thought to be the largest radio contract awarded in South Australia outside of the South Australian Government Radio Network (SAGRN). It is estimated that the process will take up to three years to complete, with the contract also including a five-year maintenance agreement.

Tait Communications will supply its TP9400 portable and TM9400 mobile radios through Tetracom as the prime contractor.

South Australian Emergency Services Minister Tony Piccolo said the new digital radios will provide superior audio for line-of-sight communication and greater reliability for on-ground tactical radio communication during major incidents.

“Volunteer safety and effective communications on a fire ground is very important and you cannot underestimate its value when it comes to the safety of our volunteers,” says Piccolo.

“The new units will complement the recently announced upgrade to the South Australian Government Radio Network… [which] provides command and control communications to firefighters, while this upgrade to the tactical command radios will benefit firefighters working together on the fire ground.”

The CFS currently uses four types of radio systems on a day-to-day basis and during incidents:

• The SAGRN for command and control;
• Short-range infrastructure-independent VHF for fire ground operations;
• Long-range HF;
• UHF CB radio for liaison with Farm Fire Units.

The SAGRN is P25 and enables wide-area communications from incidents to command centres, but it is not a part of the new CFS contract. The GRN operates on UHF, between 420 and 440 MHz, whereas the CFS fire ground radios are VHF between 150 and 155 MHz.

The digital upgrade

It has been a while since the CFS upgraded its radio equipment. The service’s current fire ground radios are VHF simplex analog units that Tetracom supplied about a decade ago. Every CFS brigade in South Australia will have its equipment updated, with installations commencing in July 2015.

According to the CFS, the advantages of moving to a digital fire radio system will include:

• Information such as unit ID, status buttons and enhanced text messages embedded into a single digital radio channel;
• Noise cancellation;
• A number of new software applications, such as GPS location information (see below) and improved emergency button functionality.

The new contract will include around 1200 vehicle-mounted Tait mobile units and just under 3000 Tait portable units. A substantial number of the installations will occur next financial year, with the balance the following year when the CFS has another budget release.

The speaker microphone for the mobiles will be yellow to differentiate it from GRN mobiles and the portable will be a high visibility green. Tetracom will supply and install the VHF mobiles and portables, provide training in their use and offer ongoing support and maintenance.

The radios will be trunking capable, which will enable them to be compatible with interstate fire services. For instance, when the CFS is asked to assist the Victorian CFA, they can go onto the Victorian network. The radios are programmed in four zones: an analog zone; the new digital zone; a Victoria zone; and one that’s compatible with the NSW RFS. Such interoperability will enable volunteers from interstate to use their existing radios on the fire ground rather than using loan radios, as was the case with the recent Sampson Flat bushfire.

The contract also includes emergency trailers full of repeater equipment, and “suitcase repeaters for P25, which aren’t common, so we’re building them up”, says Perry. “The components are off the shelf, but we assemble them in the format that’s required and then mount them up into waterproof portable cases.”

GPS functionality

The radios also have GPS built-in to assist in locating firefighters who have initiated an emergency call. In conjunction with Tait, Tetracom is programming custom software so that when a call is received by a radio, the relative position of the caller is shown. “So they’ll be able to see that, for instance, the person calling is 200 m away in a south-southeast direction,” says Perry. “Tait originally did this for DEPI in Victoria, but this is an extension of what they’ve done there that’s going to become mainline from now on.”

“This feature is crucial when volunteers are working in the dense smoke of a fire ground, for example, and it will help ensure our volunteers are safe,” adds Piccolo.

“The other thing we’re doing as part of the contract is developing a software application that will allow strike team leaders to look at a wireless tablet and be able to see where all the units they’re responsible for are, what state they’re in, whether they need water, are under duress and so on,” says Perry. “We’re only doing a proof of concept as part of this contract. But obviously, if it works as it’s intended to, they’d be looking to roll it out across the organisation.”

At the time of writing, the proposed order for the roll-out was the CFS HQ and State Training Centre first, followed by aviation units, then the six regions in groups of two, and lastly the CFS engineering unit.

“Volunteer safety and effective communications on a fire ground are imperative operationally,” said Ann De Piaz, CFS executive director of frontline services support. “Without these two we compromise our emergency service delivery, which impacts directly on the public’s safety.

“We are excited about this roll-out, which will further strengthen our service delivery and our communication with our partner agencies on the fire ground.”