The armed police service responsible for protecting civil nuclear sites has chosen Pennine Telecom to upgrade communications in its command and control rooms at the Sellafield site in Cumbria.
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary’s governing body, the Civil Nuclear Police Authority has awarded Pennine a contract to supply, install and maintain an integrated communication system.
The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC) has policing responsibilities for civil nuclear sites, nuclear materials on site or in transit, and provides reassurance and ensure the safety of the communities living within 5 km of nuclear sites, and interlinks with the local Home Office police forces.
The new system incorporates two control rooms, 11 operator positions with Touchscreens, which integrate Airwave, telephony, ambient room microphones and evidential voice recording. A radio or telephone call can be made or received by simply touching the screen and calls can be transferred from telephone to radio users and vice versa.
Pennine, based in Bury, Greater Manchester, was awarded the contract due to its technical specification and best value. The project started in December 2008 and the system is expected to be up and running by next May. Within the scope of the contract the CNC have the option to rollout the new system to all seven of the UK sites that they have a major presence at.
The upgrade of the command and control rooms will provide CNC with benefits:
– Number of operator positions will increase from five to 11
– Ability to expand to up to 2000 operators
– Supports digital and SIP telephony as well as analogue
– Ability to integrate multiple CNC sites into an enterprise level solution using standard IP based LAN and WAN connectivity
– Cost effective to deploy on very small sites but scalable to support large scale deployments
– Offers full system redundancy and resilience features necessary for mission critical operations
– Ability to add other applications such as door access control, tannoy, CCTV, alarm and perimeter monitoring, etc into the integrated communication system
"It is very rewarding to win this CNC tender against competition from other larger companies,¨ said Andrew Roberts, Managing Director at Pennine Telecom.
"We have extensive experience in the nuclear industry and have successfully provided numerous solutions to a variety of sites, including the CNC. We pride ourselves in consistently delivering bespoke solutions to meet our customers¡œ exacting requirements and timescales."
