Seminars On Computer Modeling of Phone Traffic, Quality Improvement
Boston PD Has New Center, But Still Not Civilianized

by Gary Allen

A second full day of seminars, a tour of the Boston Police and EMS comm centers and a second day of trade show exhibits occupied attendees to the annual APCO conference.

The weather remained warm (upper 70's) and humid, but overcast until late afternoon, when the sun broke through in the downtown area for the first time during the conference. The seminars began at 8 a.m. again--despite the late hour of last night's MANAPCO "Blues Brothers" event--there were plenty of sleepy faces in the morning and nodding heads later in the afternoon.

We have learned of three more job openings in San Francisco's Emergency Communications Department--two have already been filled by APCO first vice-president Thera Bradshaw (director) and another colleague (chief operating officer) from Washington state. The new positions are for a Deputy Director-Client Services (closes Aug. 25, top pay $92,924), Deputy Director--Finance & Administration (closes Aug. 18, top pay $107,562), and Continuous Quality Improvement Manager (closes Oct. 1, top pay $77,922). Contact the ECC at (415) 558-3872 for a city application.

APCO kicked off its Virtual College program with a noon pep rally in the lower exhibit hall. APCO staff handed out pompoms and megaphones and president Joe Hanna spoke about the new program.

Simulated Center

Stuart Fillingham, program manager of the Lancashire Police (England) gave an interesting seminar on the use of computer modeling software to pre-determine staffing and other variables when his agency consolidated 19 control rooms into just six.

He explained that the 19 centers were not automated, used an analog radio system, had no standard of service, and provided no mobile data access. The constabulary is the eighth-largest in the country, with 5,000 officers organized into six divisions. It serves about 1.4 million residents over 200 square miles, and the comm center handles about 7,245 incidents a day.

Fillingham said the force tried a consolidation in 1996, but it was ill-planned and ran into immediate problems. That experience made the current consolidation plan even more difficult--the legacy of failure was still very much alive.

A 1998 report by Her Majesty's Inspector said the control rooms were "embarrassing museum pieces." At about the same time, the Home Secretary pushed through a plan to put all 43 police forces in the country onto a single digital radio system--Lancashire is due to make that transition this September.

The control centers use a two-step method of answering the phone--all calls are answered by civilian calltakers, and if the caller requires a police response, he/she is transferred to the deployment center, where another civilian fields the call and enters it for radio dispatch by a police officer.

Fillingham said he took eight weeks of call data obtained from the phone system, imported it into a spreadsheet program, and then converted it to the format needed by the modeling software--ProModel by ProModel Software of Orem (Utah). The software was configured to display the proposed set-up of the consolidated centers, and it was then ready to accept the call history data and show how the set-up would fare.

The modeling software quickly ran through the data and computed how well they met the force's various service measures: answer 93% of emergency calls within 10 seconds, and 85% of non-emergency calls within 20 seconds. The force tweaked the configurations to find the optimum balance of staffing and performance.

Fillingham said the modeling software worked well, but they had to run the program several times after they discovered that their original telephone history data was flawed---not all the data used the same timestamp points. He said the modeling analysis will continue to be made every six months. He pointed out that modeling has many advantages: it allows analysis you couldn't perform any way other than read life, it's inexpensive, it minimizes the final risk, and it provides "hard copy" proof of a staffing concept that can accompany your proposal--and perhaps increase the chances it will be accepted by administrators, customers and even dispatchers.

Contact ProModel at (801) 223-4600 for information about the software and a demo CD.

Best Performance

Michael McDougall and Lisa Sullivan presented a seminar on the quality improvement program at the Santa Cruz County (Calif.) Emergency Communications Center, a joint powers agency that serves 10 fire departments, two police departments and the sheriff south of San Francisco.

The four year-old program is now termed Standards of Excellence, and gathers dispatcher performance information, and then feeds it back to the dispatchers in a non-evaluative way that encourages self-improvement.

McDougall said QI not only improves performance, but allows a comm center to respond to specific issues that might be raised by its customer agencies (slow dispatch times, not enough info, etc.), and makes justifying investments easier. "It gives you an edge over many other agencies who are competing for the same pot of money," he said.

He said it's important to start a QI program with a focus on the customers--the agencies you serve. Their needs will drive the direction of the program. He added that your CAD system must be able to collect, compile and report on the necessary data to determine dispatcher performance. In most cases, this involves timestamps, incident types and other activity records.

You must also establish what is "quality" you want to measure, and must establish a way to measure it. That is, politeness may be a difficult to define and measure. However, it's easier to define "dispatch speed" as the time between when a 911 call is answered to when it's presented to the radio dispatcher for assignment to a field unit. Lastly, you must establish a compliance measure for each item. For example, answer 911 calls (item) within 10 seconds (performance) 95% of the time (compliance).

Once you've done all this, you're ready to print out the data in an understandable format (graphs are more effective than spreadsheets), and present it to the dispatcher. McDougall cautioned that the presentation should not be done by the dispatcher's supervisor--doing so will lead the dispatcher to believe the report is an evaluation, when it's not intended to be. Rather, have a coach, senior dispatcher or QI-assigned person present the information.

McDougall said they now have a quarterly awards program based on the dispatcher with the top performance and the most improved from the previous quarter. The winners receive free dinners, movie tickets, etc. He said that a handful of dispatchers consistently appear at the top of the "best" list, leading some dispatchers to believe those persons have proprietary techniques for keeping their numbers high. To counter this, he said they will soon add team awards to the program, which he expects will encourage the excellent dispatchers to share their performance techniques.

He and Sullivan then ticked off 11 lessons they learned on QI:

• the organization need to support the effort
• management must have the right to set work standards, usually by union agreement
• you must have the right tools to obtain the necessary data
• supervisors should be involved at the agency level, but not the dispatcher level
• recognize when you've improved as much as you can
• think about the program name--they stopped using "QI" after customer agencies said it sounded like they needed improvement
• make sure your performance data is correct--you usually have to hand check it
• trumpet your success "loudly and often"
• be patient for change, and expect the dispatchers to be impatient for their own improvement
• set realistic standards for performance based on the average worker
• package your feedback reports to the dispatcher effectively--visual is better than just numbers

New Building, New Future

Ten years ago when APCO visited Boston for its 1990 conference, the city's EMS and police department comm centers were squeezed together in a remodeled area of police headquarters. The EMS dispatchers had barely a closet of space, the civilian calltakers were entering incident into a rudimentary "calls for service" computer system, and sworn officers were hunkered over old Motorola consoles dispatching the incidents to field units.

A lot has changed since then, but then again, a lot has remained the same. The police department and EMS agency moved into a 25,000 square-foot facility on the fourth floor of a new police headquarters in 1997, and the phone, CAD, logging recorder and environmental systems are all state-of-the-art. The one thing that remains is the police officers--usually non-volunteers--at the radio consoles.

The center operates under BPD's Operations Division, now headed by Dep. Superintendent William Bradley, who personally greeted the APCO visitors, explained the center's police operation and presented everyone with a copy of the 1999 police annual report and a BPD patch. Brendan Kearney, commander of the EMS communications division, handed out a pamphlet about the center along with a EMS patch. The police department handed out a copy of their fancy 1999 annual report and a patch.

Outside the building is a giant radio antenna, appearing to be stuck to the side of the structure with glue. The entrance to the area is brightly lit and inviting, even though the door have electronic locks. Look closely at the decals of the EMS and police agencies on the window glass--on the left door is, "One If By Land" and the right door continues, "Two If By Sea," in tribute to Paul Revere's historic communication.

Someone must have visited the San Jose (Calif.) comm center, because it's arranged in a very similar way--offices, training and equipment rooms around the outside of the building, and the dispatch floors in the center of the building. A hallway runs around the centers' perimeter.

BPD answers only 911 calls and transfers them if necessary to the EMS center. Staffing varies from 14 to 20 civilian calltakers per shift. Other calls and duties have been delegated out to other civilian units outside the comm center.

Calls to 7-digit numbers are answered by telephone operators in partitioned space adjacent to, but outside, the comm center. This same space houses five civilians and one officer in a teletype unit, 14 civilians in a stolen car/tow unit, and 16 civilians in a Neighborhood Interaction Unit that takes reports by phone when appropriate.

The center handles about 500,000 to 600,000 calls for service a year, which are logged using the older COBOL version of PRC's CAD software, running on linked DEC Alpha computers. A third computer at the separate fire comm center offers a back-up if the police headquarters must be evacuated.

Incoming calls are routed to calltakers on one side of a large room, with a supervisors' podium on one side. Opposite the podium, and behind a wall, is another raised area originally intended for supervision but now used for auxiliary operations. This area also has a one-person security monitoring area, with city alarms and building close-circuit TV monitors. The windows behind the supervisors' area look into the EMS center.

If the selected calltaker doesn't answer the phone immediately, it rolls over to another calltaker, and then a third. At that point, the call is routed directly to the adjacent EMS center (they can enter a police incident if required). If, by some chance, the EMS center is overwhelmed, the call is routed outside to the separate fire department comm center, and then to an adjacent jurisdiction. This rarely occurs, we were told. In fact, the call system does not have a recording or "busy" signal--callers always receive an answer from a live person. In fact, the centers have a "no hold" policy for calls, so citizens get the most direct service.

Likewise, if a medical call arrives, the calltakers transfer it to the EMS center. If all their 3-4 calltakers are busy, the police calltaker can enter an EMS incident, which then appears on the screen of one of two EMS radio dispatchers. [close-up] [another view] At least one and sometimes two EMS radio dispatchers staff a two-position pod at one end of the room. [view 2] [view 3] A two-position pod at the other end coodinates hospital operations, the so-called C-MED position.

A supervisors' podium overlooks the radio, calltaker and C-MED operations.

Police calls are radio dispatched by one of five sworn police officers from an area adjacent to the police calltakers. Just like when we visited 10 years ago, this area is very dimly lit (by officer choice), although one or two had their individual workstation lights on.

Superintendent Bradley said he is currently working on civilianizing the center, and is working through several union issues. "I'm going to change that," he vowed. About 30 officers would be affected by the change. He said the officers would be moved out first under the proposed plan, then sergeants, then lieutenants. Eventually, the entire management staff would be civilian, he said.

Bradley said the center has a Communications Employee of the Month award (movie tickets, dinner, etc.), and sends "thank you" letters to citizens who use the Neighborhood Interaction Unit. He's working making the department's Stress Unit available to dispatchers.

On the EMS side, the large and brightly-lit area is divided into four areas: radio dispatch (usually two on-duty at a time), calltaking (3-4), C-MED (coordinates 30 hospitals in 62 cities) (1) and supervisor's podium (1-2). The center handled about 95,555 incidents in 1999 (priority 1-3), which actually resulted in 154,325 individual unit responses (some incidents generate several ambulances). The median response time is 5.7 minutes from the time the call was first answered to unit arrival.

The EMS dispatchers wearing white-over-brown uniforms and are EMT trained. They also receive training in CAD, general computer operation, the VESTA phone system, and APCO's basic dispatcher and EMD curriculum. They perform 30 shifts of on-the-job training for calltaking, and 45 shifts for radio dispatching. They also complete a written and practical test.

Both police and fire civilians and officers work 8-hour shifts. EMS dispatchers are cross-trained on all duties and rotate every two hours.

A status board at the front of both centers displays the number of staff logged on to field calls, the number available to answer calls, and the number "not ready" for any reason--usually supervisors who have not logged tagged themselves as taking calls.

Other rooms include logging tape, back-up batter, telephone equipment, lockers and break room. A meeting room is arrange to allow training or EOC operations.

Late Win

It was APCO night at Fenway Park, where the Red Sox came from behind to beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays 4-3. The city is planning to build a new baseball park to replace the aging but historic structure within walking distance of the convention center. But funding issues are raising red flags among some taxpayers, who feel that only baseball fans should pay the millions it will take to build the stadium.

We saw batting, a pick-off play, and the celebration at game's end.

Other Material: Check Linda Olmstead photo collection of the event.

Tomorrow: Last seminars and closing banquet.