The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Command and Control Mobilising System (CCMS)

15. The SFRS decided that it would require a single proven Command and Control supplier to design, supply, install, commission and maintain the system. The SFRS’ specification of requirements included:

• A CCMS which would provide everything from management of telephony and radio calls to dispatch of resources, incident management, records management, provision of full audit log and support for mobilised resources.
• Interoperability by incorporating the ability to intelligently route calls to the most appropriate OC in Scotland, and to allow any Scottish OC to manage telephony and radio calls from anywhere across Scotland to mobilise the most appropriate SFRS resource regardless of the OC or resource location.

16. The specification for the new system was lengthy, detailed and prescriptive and the view has been expressed to us, with the benefit of hindsight, that the original specification was overly detailed and prescriptive.

17. As a consequence of the large number of requirements and the amount of detail in the original specification, a number of prospective suppliers were deemed to be unable to fulfil the requirements.

18. Systel; (Systèmes et Telecommunications), a company based in France, was the only applicant declaring the ability to fulfil the requirements, and was awarded the contract in January 2018.

19. The SFRS then ran the project with a project team and received external scrutiny and major project assurance from the Scottish Government Digital Assurance Team.