Prince William gets $16.4M 9-1-1 calling system, prepares for ‘next generation 9-1-1’

Prince William police and fire rescue now has a new 9-1-1 calling system in place.

The new system – called Premier One – which had a contracted cost of $16.4 million is being managed by Motorola.

According to a Motorola release, Prince William handles 400,000 emergency calls per year.

Current system was at ‘end of life’

“Prince William County has several systems that support safety…of those, we were at end of life for many if not all of them, and had to develop a plan to replace and upgrade those,” said Prince William fire and rescue Battalion Chief Scott Boggs.

Boggs stated that the county went through a lengthy bidding process to find a new vendor for the county’s 9-1-1 calling system.

“That process included over 3,000 requirements that each vendor had to respond to, and we went through a fairly lengthy negotiation process. The outcome was that Motorola was contracted with Prince William County to replace the computer aided dispatch, law records management, fire records management, personnel and asset management, as well as a software solution to handle logistics and training and facilities,” said Boggs.

Next generation 9-1-1

There are two unique features of the new emergency response system – it’s connection to regional public safety systems, and it’s potential to incorporate ‘next generation 9-1-1’ which will allow for texts and other types of messages, instead of strictly voice emergency calls.

“Of that $600,000 was grant funding for inter-operability, and that is to connect our system to other systems that are connected in the national Capital region,” said Boggs.

“When you look at public safety, and answering 9-1-1 calls, next generation 9-1-1 is the big push now, with being able to take on not just voice calls, but texts and things like that. Because Premier One is a modern platform, it will give the county the ability to add those next generation abilities as they need to…it will help them grow in the future,” said Motorola Director of Product Management for Smart Public Safety Steve Mayes.

Improvements already seen for first responders

The new system went live at the end of June, and while they’re still working on getting dispatches fully comfortable with the software, Prince William police has already seen a big improvement in information given to their officers.

“Obviously it takes a little time to get used to new software for our staff, but I can tell you from a management perspective, I’ve been through many of these upgrades…and it’s a challenge for most us to do that normally. In this case we took a proactive approach and utilized things like Motorola training all of our dispatch staff and also making sure our training was time appropriately and we’re actually at the point now where we’re tweaking,” said Boggs.

Prince William sheriff’s lieutenant Patrick Aigner referenced the improvements when speaking about a recent robbery call.

“The information available to the individual officers on the street is critical for the public safety aspect, as well as the investigative aspect. We’ve already seen in just over a week so many examples of the enhanced functionalities. For instance – we had a robbery last week – in the eastern district, and the mapping feature, which allows the officer to see where their partners are in relation to the target address…allows us to use much better positioning for keeping the suspect potentially in that perimeter. We’ve already seen where that enhancement has helped our officers,” Aigner said.