Command, control and communications services supporting
new traffic officers are to be managed by IT services company
Computacenter, under a five-year deal with the UK’s Highways
Agency.
Under the managed service contract, which is worth more than
£8m, Computacenter will deliver a range of IT services in
partnership with information and communications technology
specialist Vivista to support the IT infrastructure at the agency’s
new Regional Control Centres.
The seven centres are a core part of a new Highways Agency
service for England’s motorways, which is expected to reduce
congestion by 5% in the next five years.
Ian Chalmers, Highway’s Agency technology team leader for the
Regional Control Centres, said: “Staff at the centres will be
responsible for a number of services that will help to manage
incidents and keep traffic moving on the country’s 4,800 miles of
motorway. As a result the systems they use need to be continuously
available and highly resilient.”
More than 300 control centre staff will eventually use the
system, which will enable them to dispatch traffic officers to
incidents. The command and control centre infrastructure is based
on a clustered Sun Microsystems and HP server backend, which was
configured by Computacenter to ensure what it says is maximum
resilience.
HP desktops are also being used by the control centre staff,
along with bespoke command and communications solutions from
Vivista. Meanwhile the 1,000 traffic officers will be equipped with
Sepura Airwave radio terminals.
All these technologies will be supported under the managed
service, which will go live in Spring 2005 along with the first
regional control centre in the West Midlands. “By partnering with
experienced IT service providers, we are able to reduce the risks
and costs associated with managing the new system,” said
Chalmers.