Enhancing 911 Operations: A Large Greater Toronto Area PSAP’s Ongoing Partnership with Wilmac Technologies
June 6th, 2024
Written by John McDonnell, Public Safety Sales Director
Wilmac Technologies has supported a large 9-1-1 center, or Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), in the Greater Toronto Area for over 20 years, providing critical 911 recording solutions and ensuring compliance with evolving public safety requirements.
The Opportunity
This PSAP went to RFP to move on from their outdated Dictaphone system in 2004. The complexity of their recording environment was giving them difficulty in finding the best option.
Managing one of the largest 911 centers in the Greater Toronto area, they needed a modern solution to handle:
- 64 call-takers across three shifts
- 840,000 annual 911 calls
- Incident reconstruction and quality assurance for dispatchers and call-takers
Over our 20-year partnership, this 9-1-1 center in the GTA have commissioned Wilmac for a variety of upgrades and evolutions to their recording situation. Most recently, in 2023, Wilmac assisted them in their Next Generation 911 transition.
The PSAP was required by the Government of Ontario to transition to NG911 by 2025. This included transitioning their telephony to IP-based instead of analog, which allows them to serve the public on the evolving channels they utilize.
Wilmac entered the project to help them attain four locations with full resiliency. The following was recorded:
- SIP trunks as their IP-based communication channel
- Motorola Vesta as their IP-based telephony for call-takers.
- Motorola ASTRO 25 as their radio system for dispatchers.
- Cisco Unified as their telephony for administrators.
The Solution
In 2004, Wilmac Technologies was awarded the RFP and implemented NICE Inform into their infrastructure. NICE Log 8.9 was implemented in 2004 to help the 9-1-1 center log all 911 calls and radio traffic.
In 2007, NICE Log 8.9 was made end of life and NICE’s new incident recording solution, NICE Inform, was brought into play. The large PSAP continued their partnership with Wilmac due to our familiarity with their complex recording environment, and Wilmac successfully transitioned them to NICE Inform.
In 2019, they upgraded to NICE Inform Elite through Wilmac. Moving from their original NICE Inform solution to Elite included additional valued-added features like:
- CAD integration: seamless integration with the 911 center’s dispatch system, Motorola PremierOne.
- NICE Inform Evaluator: enhanced quality assurance for dispatchers and call-takers.
- NICE Inform Organizer: unified incident reconstruction tool for reconstruction and discovery teams.
Wilmac now supports 348 redundant channels for this large 9-1-1 center in the Greater Toronto Area.
Key Stats from Wilmac’s Partnership with a Large PSAP in Greater Toronto
840,000
9-1-1 calls annually
20+ Year
partnership
50%
reduction in time spent on QA & discovery
10%
increase in employee retention
Outcomes
The large PSAP in the Greater Toronto Area has achieved the following outcomes in working with Wilmac, that they struggled to fulfill prior:
- Compliance with NG911 mandates
- Recording their SIP trunks
- Comprehensive quality assurance
- Full integration with their CAD system
- Simplified reconstruction and discovery distribution
- Geographic redundancy
What do these outcomes mean? The 9-1-1 center has seen the following successes through their partnership with Wilmac:
Increased Employee Retention Rate
Their supervisors conduct regular teaching, coaching, and guidance sessions to improve the skills of call-takers and dispatchers with NICE Inform Evaluator. Now better equipped to handle the intensity of emergency situations, their employees are more satisfied with their work, increasing their employee retention rate by 10%.
Increased Quality of Call-Taker & Dispatcher Performance
NICE Inform Evaluator pinpoints areas of improvement for all 64 call-takers, allowing supervisors to conduct more regular training and coaching sessions on relevant skills. This improves the call-takers and dispatchers’ abilities to serve the public in emergency situations.
NICE Inform Elite automated QA, incident reconstruction, and reporting which has helped the PSAP reduce time spent on these tasks by 50%.
Decreased Amount of Time Spent on Discovery & Reconstruction
NICE Inform Organizer has served as an incredible tool to speed up time to answer reconstruction and discovery requests. NICE Inform Elite’s CAD integration has also helped tremendously. Instead of parsing through recordings in disparate systems, their reconstruction team can answer discovery requests in half the time.
Deeper Insights with Reporting
Instead of receiving high-level statistics, their supervisors can dig much deeper into the overall performance of their PSAP with NICE Inform Elite. All CAD, telephony, radio, and text modules are consolidated to provide near real-time views of performance in charts, maps, and other visual dashboards.
Continued Partnership
This PSAP continues to work with Wilmac due to:
- Our local service team providing rapid on-site support.
- Expertise in designing and managing complex recording environments.
- Close collaboration with their project management team.
- Our commitment to keeping them updated with the latest NICE Inform versions.
- Our longstanding trust and proven results in public safety service.
As a premier partner of NICE and a leading provider of NICE Inform solutions, Wilmac is frequently dispatched by NICE to assist direct customers due to its exceptional service. This longstanding partnership highlights Wilmac’s expertise and commitment to delivering top-tier solutions in the public safety sector.
Wilmac’s dedication to exceptional service and advanced solutions has cemented its role as a trusted partner for all nine of the PSAPs in the Greater Toronto Area, driving continuous improvements in their public safety operations.
