E-911 Facility Construction Nears Completion
Paulding’s E-911 director is targeting the end of the month to make the transition of full operations into its newly constructed facility on Industrial Blvd in Dallas.
E-911 Director David Mumford gave an update on the construction of the new headquarters, which broke ground last year and is now tying up a few remaining loose ends before the move, tentatively slated for the last week in April.
Price tag for the new facility, paid out of SPLOST and E-911 fees, was estimated during the design process to be in the $2 million range.
Mumford said the building is 98 percent done and that he is working on a transition plan with vendors and through several levels of ‘redundancy’ there would no down-time to current operations. Mumford addressed Paulding commissioners last week during their morning session and told commissioners that the project has remained on budget.
“We’re on schedule and on budget; I can’t say that we’re as under budget as I’d like us to be, but we’re not over budget either,” Mumford said.
Commissioner Tony Crowe asked what would possibly postpone the tentative late April move date into the new facility. Mumford answered that the delay, if there were one, would stem most likely from issues with connectivity and would probably be tech- related in nature.
“But we’re ready to go on our end,” Mumford said. The department had been targeted to transition into its new location at the site at 1389 Industrial Blvd. by the spring of this year. The actual move-in from the current location will most likely take place over the course of only one day, Mumford said. An open house at the new site is also planned around the end of the month, Mumford said.
Paulding’s current facility had been operating at capacity for some time now, Mumford told the board last summer. The new building has been designed to have additional storage space and options for more operators.
Mumford explained in a previous update that the staff would expand from eight positions to 13. An upgrading of the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system to Next Generation has been moved over to the new facility and an updated emergency dispatch medical protocol has standardized “how we ask questions and how we dispatch” Mumford told the board last year. Mumford also told Paulding commissioners last year in a November session that the upgraded phone system will have an offsite back-up housed at the Watson Complex in the event that staff were forced to abandon the main facility.
“I can honestly say that we’re moving into something state-of- the- art; with the equipment we already have and recent upgrades that we’ve done, along with the new stuff we have coming into the building,” Mumford said.
Paulding’s E-911 fielded an average of about 318 dispatch calls every 24-hours during 2016, with the total call volume approaching 300,000. Use of text messaging is also on the rise since it has become available, Mumford said.