FORCE CONTROL ROOM AIR OPERATIONS
24. Dedicated Control Room Dispatchers will be provided by Kent Police. They will receive initial training in air operations control and deployment and provide the Kent Air Ops capability at the FCR.
25. It is anticipated that providing the required level of cover for a country wide operation of this type will require 36 dispatchers and 5 supervisors.
26. These staff will be Kent Police employees who have attained Level 5 dispatcher capability within the FCR or in the case of supervisors are Team Leaders, (or police officer equivalents).
27. Staff will serve a 3 month tour of duty with Kent Air Ops before rotating back to their section.
Out of the 3 months 'tour of duty' away from their sections, how much time will be taken up for this training? In financial terms, how much will the training packages be to initially set up and then deliver to 36 despatches and 5 supervisors every 3 months ? ( I take it the supervisors will do the same training package as the operators and then an add on package?) Comparing it to a CRM course,
£200 pp would mean that each quarter NPAS would fork out in the region of £8,200 (
£32,800 pa)
I assume part of the 3 monthly package would be to actually fly the Kent controllers & supervisors with the different units in the different environments! By the time that's all done, it will be time to leave.
Training new and replacing 41
'experienced' staff every 3 months, sounds an awful waste of time, money and knowledge, let alone all the C4I issues.
What we learn from history, is that we don't learn from history!
"This is yet another example of a Government IT project taking on a life of its own, absorbing ever-increasing resources without reaching its objectives. The rationale and benefits of a regional approach were unclear and badly communicated to locally accountable fire and rescue services who remained unconvinced. Essential checks and balances in the early stages of the project were ineffective. It was approved on the basis of unrealistic estimates of costs and under-appreciation of the complexity of the IT involved and the project was hurriedly implemented and poorly managed. Its legacy is the chain of expensive regional control centres whose future is uncertain."
Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, 1 July 2011
The failure of the FiReControl project - National Audit Office