Introduction
Managing a business in the presence of a pandemic means finding ways to mitigate new risks. The scenarios addressed below are real scenarios brought to us by our Partners trying to help their Customers. We were able to offer a way forward.
Imagine your facility’s day to day operations (in this case a Port) are suddenly brought to a halt because you can no longer communicate with key staff who are not sick but need to work from home and ‘home’ is out of range of your instant communications system.
Imagine that without a demonstrable means of measuring staff densities on site, you will have to shut the site down.
Presented with these scenarios, what simple steps can you take to remain:
a) open for business; and/or
b) operational
You can address the former by extending the Instant Communications system that is at the heart of your operations by adding LMR bridges and providing home workers with Broadband PTT (BBPTT) devices that will work from anywhere. For a contactless deployment, your staff can use their own devices (BYOD) and follow joining instructions sent by email. This way your staff can remain at home and remain involved in the conversation. If staff at home become Lone Workers, simply add a BS8484 compliant Lone Worker Protection (LWP) Service to a compliant device. By extending the range of your instant communications systems in this way your business operations can continue.
The second scenario can be addressed by locating your staff outdoors and indoors in zones corresponding to defined areas and counting the number of staff in those zones. If a maximum number is exceeded, an alert can be generated so the controller can communicate with the group in the zone to reduce the numbers present. With staff density management in place your site can remain open.
The role of Airsys.Cloud in managing pandemic associated risks (& other instant communications conundrums)
Airsys Broadband Push-to-Talk (BBPTT) platform (Airsys.Cloud) is a simple to use, flexible, scalable hosted BBPTT solution capable of addressing the scenarios set out above (and many more).
Airsys.Cloud is able to address such scenarios quickly and easily because much of the solution (servers, software and connectivity) is already deployed, all we have to do to get you going is commission the elements needed to address your immediate requirements.
In the first scenario above (home workers out of range), we offered LMR bridging elements to make radio users available as clients to a private BBPTT service, deploying a bridge per channel such that the network model remained as is. We offered connected devices (potentially BYOD) as further clients to the service on the same channels such that the conversations required to remain operational could continue as before wherever staff might be. The connections involved can be provided by Mobile Networks or via Wi-Fi.
Lone Worker Protection can be deployed at the same time. Airsys.Cloud can provide a BS8484:2016 compliant Lone Worker Protection (LWP) Service. This is achieved by deploying Airsys.Cloud’s LWP Bolt-On application for BBPTT users with compliant devices and for Airsys Rodon dispatch users who will act as the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC). Alerts can be triggered by:
- Emergencies
- Man down
- Impact
- Lack of movement
- Periodic checks
- Connection & battery status
In the second scenario (staff density on site both outdoors and indoors), we offered GPS location outdoors and offered BTLE beacons indoors such that any user device could ‘see’ (line of site) at least 3 beacons within 6 metres of its location. We also offered Airsys.Cloud’s Indoor Localisation Bolt-On application for BBPTT users and for Airsys Rodon dispatch users such that the latter could track and manage staff density both indoors and out.
Our offer included:
- uploading a plan of the site and of each level of each building and calibrating them (placing them on the map using GPS coordinates)
- collecting BT data points at known locations indoors using the BBPTT devices in play
- training each level and the location of each building such that Airsys.Cloud is then able to locate staff within them
- creating zones (geofences) reflecting indoor and/or outdoor areas where staff density is to be measured and setting up the system such that staff entering zones join a channel in use in that zone.
The channel count for the zone can then be used to count the number of staff and alert the controller if a threshold is exceeded. The controller can then contact all staff in the zone at the push of a button to manage the situation.
Conclusion
As can be seen from the above, Airsys.Cloud is sufficiently flexible to provide the tools required to manage different scenarios that might otherwise bring your Customer’s day to day operations to a halt or force them to close down their projects.
If you or your Customers are facing similar issues, extending the reach and/or functionality of their instant communications system may help. If so, please get in touch with us, we will be only too pleased to discuss how we can help.
The team at Airsys.Cloud
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Our dedicated team of Broadband Push-to-Talk specialists are here to work with you to deliver your needs, whatever your requirements.
Within the Broadband Push-to-Talk market, Airsys.Cloud has become an essential provider of telecommunications solutions. Discuss with our team today on how we can do more with what you have.