City of Phoenix Upgrades Emergency Communications

The city of Phoenix recently upgraded emergency communications infrastructure at two parking garages in downtown Phoenix. One of the garages is open to public parking and is located on the intersection of West Washington Street and 3rd Avenue. The second garage is reserved for City of Phoenix employees.

BCD Voltage Systems was commissioned to replace the existing telecommunications wiring along with emergency phones. City of Phoenix selected Talk-A-Phone’s line of phone line powered emergency phones for this installation.

Emergency phones were replaced throughout seven floors of the public parking garage. BCD Voltage Systems did a walk-through of the client facility and identified improved placement of the emergency phones for higher visibility and accessibility of the product. Additional phones were strategically placed close to stairwells.

The existing system had to be kept operational, which presented its unique challenges during the installation. BCD Voltage Systems crew pulled the new wiring in the same conduit as the old system with great care. The installation of new emergency phones and wiring took place while the old system was still up and running.

In many cases, new conduit had to be run to the desired location of the phone. “Our biggest challenge was maintaining the integrity of the existing system, maintaining a level of security and operation for the City of Phoenix within that system while we were systematically replacing that system,” commented Dan Melsek, President and COO of BCD Voltage Systems.

The emergency phone calls are routed to the city’s central monitoring station, which is operated by the City of Phoenix Police. The monitoring station is staffed 24/7, 365 days of the year. An emergency phone call will always get a human voice.

The City of Phoenix central monitoring station is also equipped with Talk-A-Lert, a software product which allows an operator to immediately identify the location of the caller, including the floor and the corner of the specific garage they are in. Talk-A-Lert also verifies the accessibility of all emergency phones on schedule and reports any discrepancies in real time.

For BCD Voltage Systems, simplicity and reliability of the product played an important role. As a part owner of a veteran security integration business, Dan Melsek shared his post-installation perspective, “I don’t think we’ve had any callbacks at all for those two garage installs. This has been a highly dependable product.”

For more information, visit www.talkaphone.com

—Contributed by Talk-A-Phone

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