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Bridging the gap with Hyder
Dawn Read talks to Hyder Consulting about the importance and value of using consultants and what Hyder can offer to aid the public safety sector...
Established in 1857, Hyder Consulting is synonymous with ICT, Civil, Structural and Mechanical Engineering and plays a key role in offering consultancy and advisory services to the public safety sector across the UK.
With a turnover of £136m in 2005, and 3,100 staff worldwide, Hyder Consulting has evolved into a major force within the UK. The Airwave contract has echoed this move, with the firm being awarded a contract to assist the deployment of the network, along with a wide range of technical advisory services including tender evaluation, fleet mapping and project management directly to the UK Police Forces and Prison Service, (amongst other notable contracts within the Fire and Ambulance authorities).
Why use consultants
Discussing the issue of using consultants, Chris Venemore, technology group manager, says, “Traditionally consultants have been used to provide additional resources and expertise not readily available. Now, however, we are witnessing a more strategic use of consultants to develop strategies and help the client to understand value added services such as Change Management and staff retention.”
Peter Prater, Principal Consultant adds, “Hyder is pleased to offer clients a pick and mix selection of services and these can be short term assignments or long term secondments. We are happy to support client activities or lead teams through to the delivery of the required benefits.”
Hyder has a base of 60 technical consultants, offering a wide range of expertise across a vast technological base.
Framework agreements
During the past 12 months the Hyder Consulting Telecom and IT teams have secured a plethora of framework contracts with government organisations across the UK. These have included two three-year framework contracts with the South West of England Development Agency and Welsh Development Agency to provide Information Communications Technology Consultancy Service on a call-off basis. Supplementing these, the teams have also secured further framework contracts with the Police Standards Agency and NHS Wales.
RF testing services
In addition to its consultancy services, Hyder also provides independent reports of both predictive and actual studies at PMR, cellular and TETRA sites.
Tests have been carried out for Police Forces at various radio masts, base stations and on Police Vehicles. In addition testing has been done for contractors working for cellular operators in the West Midlands as well as Airwave sites in Bath and Stroud.
Hyder also looked at the North Wales Police fleet, identifying a number of wiring and RF emission issues and providing an invaluable code of practice for use by the force.
Recognised as experts
During the past 5 years Hyder has been growing in stature within the public safety sector and of late has secured many notable contracts including:
Welsh Ambulance Service - Hyder Consulting provided advice for the content and assisted in the production of the Outline Business Case (OBC) for the Welsh element of the Ambulance Radio Re-procurement Project (ARRP). The objective was to procure an all-Wales digital mobile communications system and dispatch system. The OBC was based on the Welsh Assembly Government - 5 case model which included the following:
Strategic Case
Economic Case
Financial Case
Commercial Case
Project Management Case
Upon successful approval of the OBC by the Welsh Assembly Government, Hyder was instructed to take the responsibility for the co-ordination of the production of the Full Business Case, which is on-going.
Commenting, Peter Davies, senior consultant, says, “I have been project manager since early Feb 2004 for the implementation of the new ‘All Wales’ planning and control system for the Patient Transport side of the service. To date parts of the two of the three Welsh regions are now working live and we are continuing to move forward with implementation.”
NHS Wales Telecommunications Migration Programme (TMP) - Hyder Consulting was commissioned for 39 months to provide project management for the technical support to the NHS Department of the Welsh Assembly Government for the provision of a QoS enabled IPVPN for NHS organisations and GPs. The network comprises 800+ IPVPN connections, which provides end to end communications throughout Wales for clinical, administration and emergency services communications.
The implementation to the NHS Trusts was accelerated and delivered 9 months early.
Merseyside Police - Hyder was retained by Merseyside Police to assist with the process of identifying and selecting a supplier for a new data network. The network, that will link all Merseyside Police premises, is required since new data applications such as CCTV and picture transmission that are being proposed, require more capacity than the current network can provide.
Major issues that had to be considered when designing the new network included data security, network resilience and capacity scalability as well as, of course, initial purchase and on-going operating costs, including overall value for money. Following an initial phase of information gathering and market evaluation a specification is being produced that will define the technologies that are best suited to the purpose as well as resilient topology for the network and other critical issues.
Highways Agency - Following the need for the Highways agency to take responsibility for some elements of road policing, which will be controlled by 7 centres across the UK, Hyder are helping to implement the systems.
Vision for the future
Talking about the company’s plans for the future, Prater comments, “We aim to be recognised for providing a consistently high quality in our service delivery to clients. We recognise that more of our clients are seeking longer term secondments to senior positions in a PRINCE environment to manage complex implementations. To reflect this, we believe it is important that all of our senior consultants are PRINCE2 qualified, many to Practitioner level.”
Hyder also recognises the need longer term and therefore is training its consultants for qualifications in PRINCE 2 practitioners level - highlighting the importance of qualified, technologically minded consultants.
