Ambulance and Fire and Rescue Service Joint Emergency Control Room
The States of Jersey Fire and Rescue Service shares a Joint Control Centre facility with the States of Jersey Ambulance Service. The two Centres were previously separate (each being located within its own Service’s Headquarters) until the completion of a ‘Co-location’ project in February 2004.
The anticipated advantages of the arrangement such as increased speed of information transfer between Services, increased / improved operational co-operation and more efficient use of system infrastructure (telephones, radio system etc) have already become quite apparent to the management teams of both Services.
Since late 2004 / early 2005 a further collaborative project has been underway to fully amalgamate the two Control Centre functions. The aim of the project is to move from the Ambulance Control and Fire Control functions being simply located within the same room to a single emergency control team of multi skilled operators handling emergency calls, dispatching appropriate resources and maintaining radio communication and co-ordination for both services.
The expected advantages of this system are:
Further operational benefit to front line staff through the use of a single computer “mobilising” system for both services. This system will enter incident details, identify incident locations and will also suggest the appropriate response for the Control Officer to mobilise. The “back end” of the system will report on all activity by operational resources of both services so that more efficient use can be made of them in the future.
Increased resilience in the Control Centre function through the provision of a larger pool of appropriately qualified and experienced staff.
Almost seamless transfer of important emergency incident information between the front line responders for both services.
Control Centre Officers are Civil Servants who work in shifts. Recruitment to the Civil Service is via a single point of contact. All vacancies are advertised in the Jersey Evening Post and we recommend that you check the local press for details of such openings.
