Case Study : Gippsland Water

Delivering Business Critical Communications in Remote Locations

Gippsland Water's catchment covers an area of over 5000 sq km. A Tait Tier 3 trunking system has provided a robust communication system for workers and improved health and safety.

The Client

Gippsland Water delivers reliable, high-quality water, wastewater and waste recovery services to domestic and commercial clients across Central Gippsland in Victoria, Australia, which has a population of approximately 140,000 people. Gippsland Water provides water to nearly 65,000 properties and wastewater services to around 58,000 properties, including commercial customers in the dairy, energy, and pulp and paper industries.

The Challenge

Gippsland Water's operation covers sites in remote locations spread across an area of over 5,000 sq. km. Having a reliable communications system is essential to Gippsland:

Workers are often working in remote locations so monitoring them and being aware of any issues is critical.

The company's operation involves a number of processing plants, which are dangerous by nature making quick, clear communication vital should an incident occur.

For utility businesses like Gippsland there is the potential for an incident to not only impact staff but to also affect a vast number of consumers very quickly so it is imperative that they react promptly and effectively if the service is threatened, and communications are key in achieving this.

The existing Tait system at Gippsland Water was over 15 years old and used analogue radios.

Updating the system presented the opportunity to take advantage of the benefits of digital radio, providing for a reliable voice, health and safety communications solution.

"A two-way radio system allows for large areas to be covered whilst minimising network infrastructure costs. The Tait DMR Tier 3 solution provides an intelligent network with complete control, management and authentication of radio users and offers the capability to prioritise calls types, which is essential during an emergency event."

Dave Hicks, Logic Wireless

The System

Gippsland initially requested an upgraded system using digital radios to serve 120 key personnel. 18 months after the successful initial installation Gippsland Water continues to migrate additional staff to the DMR network, reducing reliance on other communications means, for example cell phones.

The solution CommSite has provided to Gippsland Water comprises a multisite Tait DMR Tier 3 trunking system, which offers the flexibility to make individual or group calls, location reporting and call prioritisation and Crosswire software providing voice dispatch, call recording, text messaging and location services. Crosswire is a fully featured radio management solution designed to maximise the capability of the Tait Tier 3 platform. The radio system supports Tait 9300 digital radios, which are extremely rugged and ideal for this type of application. Built-in GPS tracking in the TP9300 portable radios used with Crosswire makes it possible to track the location of radio users so that, in the event of an incident, help can be quickly dispatched. The system also includes a large number of Tait TM9300 in-vehicle mobile radios.

CommSite installed one main control at three Gippsland Water with a second disaster recovery centre located away from the main offices, with a redundant network controller and Crosswire installation. Using a software dispatch solution allows for high flexibility allowing dispatchers to operate anywhere there is an IP connection to the radio system.

The solution provided by CommSite can be easily expanded to cover a wider area if required, and using centralised network control, new radio users can easily be added. The dispatch system can be easily expanded and additional software solutions can be added, for example the EnableFleet asset management platform from Tait.

CommSite, supported by Logic Wireless, provides maintenance and support for the Crosswire despatch systems used by Gippsland.

"Updating our voice radio network to the Tait Tier 3 digital trunking radios with the Logic Wireless Crosswire software application has delivered added safety functionality, will assist in emergency response, and complements our customer service delivery systems."

Peter Skeels General Manager Operations, Gippsland Water

Providing For Business Continuity

A vast number of people rely on Gippsland for their water supply, which creates the need for robust business continuity planning. Gippsland has a full replica of the Crosswire dispatch system provided by CommSite at its disaster recovery site. This can be brought into action immediately if required to communicate with and monitor radio users.

Thank you to Gippsland Water supporting us in creating this case study.

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