The Client

The City of Perth is responsible for maintaining the day-to-day operations of the CBD and surrounds including East and West Perth. The Council’s Compliance and Works divisions employ a large mobile workforce who frequently travel ‘on foot’ in roles as parking officers, rangers, security officers, guards and surveillance staff.

The Challenge

The City of Perth’s superseded analogue radio system was frequently challenged by poor network coverage and voice clarity. These factors combined posed safety and efficiency issues, hindering the control room’s ability to contact or locate ‘on ground’ field workers to allocate tasks or advise of an emergency.

CSE Crosscom, an Orion partner, successfully exceeded requirements during field testing through the provision of interim digital radios and was awarded the tender to engineer and supply new communications infrastructure and digital handheld terminals to the Council’s Compliance and Works divisions.

The Orion Network Solution

CSE Crosscom quickly migrated the City of Perth to The Orion Network – Australia’s most reliable digital two-way radio network. The network solution provided instant capacity for new digital handheld terminals to bridge environments such as tall buildings, underground car parks, loading docks and malls – optimising street level communications.

The Orion Network solution was implemented in two phases and included:

• Installation of digital radios into Works division fleet vehicles to improve connectivity, voice clarity, and reliability.
• Deployment of Motorola DP 3601 portable radio terminals and DM 3601 mobile radio terminals into street level roles.
• Integration of data applications including GPS tracking to enable field workers to be located anywhere, anytime.
• Automated and manual trigger of emergency duress functionality in handheld terminals, including ‘man down’ alarm that is set off when a radio is tipped over or left stationary for an extended time period.
• Establishment of multiple dispatches, base radio stations around the city to monitor duress/emergency calls.
• Facilitation of multi-points of command to improve efficiencies in task allocation from the control room.
• Creation of private talk groups and interoperable channels, to enable different roles such as rangers and street sweepers to communicate.
• Training to support new users of the system.