Virginia PSAP installs new Motorola Solutions 911 solution to prepare for text, next-gen 911

After signing a deal with Motorola Solutions on Feb. 11, Stafford County went live with the Emergency CallWorks system on May 13—and that date would have been at least a week sooner, if there had not been a minor network issue outside of the control of the county and Motorola Solutions, Adams said.

“That’s an incredibly fast turnaround time for something like this,” she said.

Tom Guthrie, Motorola Solutions’ vice president of smart public-safety solutions, credited Stafford County’s leadership and the ability of Emergency CallWorks to move quickly on the project as the reason that the aggressive operational date in May was realized.

“This was a 10-week deployment, which in public-safety time is like light speed,” Guthrie said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It shows that you can get this done and get people up to speed very quickly. This is the way it should be, as opposed to taking many, many months, which is the case for a lot of other deployments.

“That’s what we saw and the reason that we acquired Emergency CallWorks—it is a next-generation platform, is easy to use, and is scalable for whatever size you need. They were a very agile, small company, and my job was not to mess that up, which is why it’s a wholly owned subsidiary. We’re not trying to turn these little companies into Motorola; it’s the other way around.”

Adams said one support aspect that was particularly helpful was Emergency CallWorks online training capability. Known as ECW University, the online training let 911 personnel become comfortable with the new system when it was convenient for them, as a supplement to the in-person training, she said.

“It’s a very efficient way [to train], without pulling bodies in on their day off or make them stay later,” Adams said.