This case study details how Syntech is helping Airwave fulfill a ten year service contract with their customer, the UK Department of Health. The partnership has resulted in Syntech developing a unique and revolutionary product for measuring the end-to-end performance of a network (The Syntech IFPM Tool). The case study examines opportunities and challenges related to product development, supply chain partnering and project management in a mission critical environment such as the emergency services.

Kent Police Force was due to adopt the new national, digital radio service provided by mmO2 Airwave. As the time approached to accept the service and trigger the 15 year payment plan, the Force was anxious to ensure that all was as the agreed acceptance criteria. Syntech Systems was engaged to represent the Force and independently analyse the coverage to ensure the required service would be delivered.

Due to an increasing number of IT system acceptances Essex Police wanted a common framework whereby all IS staff could be trained in specification, testing and acceptance. Syntech ran a series of workshops for Essex Police using a mixture of theory-based presentations, practical exercises and ‘real world’ scenarios. 

NI Fire & Rescue service (NIFRS) had purchased a new SICCS compliant solution to operate with the shared “Barracuda” Tetra based radio system. Sungard Vivista’s DS2000 solution had been installed & tested and was nearing the time to go-live.

For such an important system, the customer wanted to ensure that a consistent quality of communications was delivered at all operator positions and telephone terminations. Testing needed to be objective and was therefore to be based on the ITU-T P.862 PESQ algorithm. A minimum voice quality score of 3.5 was the design requirement.

The Melbourne Ambulance Service (MAS) is part of a joint Police-Fire-Ambulance procurement of a replacement radio service using an ACPO25 system from Motorola. Syntech provided technical quality assurance on the digital radio aspects of the project and acceptance test methodologies as part of a wider support package provided by Opticon Australia. The aim was to ensure that the delivered system, as provided by Motorola, fully met all MAS’ operational requirements.

At the start of 2006, the eight Scottish Police Forces launched a joint procurement exercise to obtain a common performance analysis package for the Airwave network. After a thorough evaluation of the packages available on the market, the Scottish Forces selected the Syntech CDR Reporting Tool as their preferred solution.