My boss nominated our team for the Utah APCO Technician of the Year award. I have included the nomination below. Last week we received notice that we won and will be honored on October 2nd at the APCO Fall Conference.
Utah APCO Annual Award.Technician of the YearI feel that this year’s award should be presented to the Technical Staff at Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communication Center. This year has been an extremely busy one for the TS team at VECC.On November 28 at 03:00 hrs they began a process to upgrade VECC to a brand new phone system (Viper) provided by Intrado. This upgrade was the first in Utah that provided end to end IP based phone delivery for over 900,000 residents in the Salt Lake Valley. Due to technical difficulties in the network the VECC TS team was required to put in a 20 hour shift. They returned after 4 hours to complete the upgrade the following morning. VECC was only the first PSAP to move to the Viper system in December of 2012 members of the VECC TS team traveled to Weber 911 and assisted with the migration there. In April 2013 Unified Police joined the network and the VECC TS team once again traveled to UPD and assisted in their migration process. Bountiful Police Department came online in May of 2013 and VECC TS also assisted them. Their willingness to assist all of the agencies was inspiringOnce the NG9-1-1 systems were up and operational VECC TS personnel then took on a second extremely large project. This project began as a simple internet upgrade. VECC had been running for 12 years on a single T1 internet connection. Due to increased needs for web based applications it was determined that VECC needed to increase to a 20 megabit connection. On the surface it seemed likea simple project but as it turned out it required that every IP address for every machine some 250 devices need to be touched and a new address entered. It also required extensive coordination between VECC vendors and user agencies to make certain that firewalls and other devices were updated. This procedure is very similar to removing all of the veins and arteries in the human body and replacing them with new, while maintaining the life of the patient.All of this was accomplished while maintaining the day to day operational needs and requirements of the center. There are numerous other accomplishments the team has achieved during this year, too many to list here.I believe that the dedication and resourcefulness of the entire VECC Technical Service Team are worthy of recognition by Utah APCO.The Team:Lin Shaffer, Eran Bair, George Priday, Brice Rawlings, Joe Borgione(Contract), Brandy LucasMark WhetselTechnical Services Manager Salt Lake Valley Emergency Communications Center