Case Study: Prince George's County Communications Center Staffing AnalysisAchieving P.01 Level of Service at a PSAP Handling 1.5 Million 9-1-1 Calls Annually

 

The Client

Prince George’s County, Maryland, Department of Public Safety Communications.

 

The Project

Prince George’s Department of Public Safety Communications is the primary PSAP for the County and the public safety communications center. The busy center processes more than 1.5 million 9-1-1 calls annually with a staff of 190.

 

The PSAP was not consistently meeting the required P.01 level of service, and the state was threatening to withhold wireless 9-1-1 funds until it did. RCC was already assisting the County with the planning, design, procurement and implementation of a new public safety radio system, so the County extended our contract to conduct a staffing analysis.

 

RCC's Role

RCC provided many important services for the Prince George's Staffing Analysis project, including:

 

  • Conducted interviews with management and supervisory staff to gain an understanding of operational and management procedures and to build the business process model.
  • Developed a detailed call process model to deal with the myriad issues of processing 9-1-1 and non-emergency calls within a rigorous performance environment.
  • Analyzed 9-1-1 and non-emergency call data using the Erlang-C model to determine the most efficient application of personnel to achieve the desired service levels.
  • Developed and administered a comprehensive employee survey to determine the employees’ opinions on a wide variety of areas relating to their job satisfaction and needs. More than 95% of the surveys distributed were returned.
  • Combined the survey results with modeling and consultants' analyses to make recommendations for process and management improvements.
  • Developed recommended shift deployment strategies to provide the most efficient use of personnel over a 24-hour period while ensuring proper staffing levels to meet the P.01 standard.

 

After our recommendations became operational, the PSAP became consistently compliant with state standards.