March 2020 Update
Since December, 2019, the county-wide 911 project has added two more agencies – Eastern Michigan University and Washtenaw County Metro Dispatch. Metro Dispatch (https://www.washtenaw.org/1262/911-Dispatch) is the largest 911 center, serving many of the police agencies in Washtenaw County including: Ann Arbor Police, Ypsilanti Police, Washtenaw County Sheriff, Pittsfield Township Police, Northfield Township Police, Huron Area Metro Parks Police, Department of Natural Resources, and the Michigan State Police. Metro Dispatch was the largest and most complex center to come online to date, and as such, there were some challenges that needed to be overcome. During the implementation process, the non-emergency lines at Metro Dispatch went down several times both during and after the installation of the new 911 equipment.
Installation Challenges
Business line outages at Metro Dispatch had no effect on 911 calls and were immediately addressed by the 911 vendor and the business line vendor. In addition, a message was delivered through the county’s mass communication platform, Nixle, to inform the public of the outages. Rest assured, if the 911 lines were to go down at any dispatch center in the county, there are fail-safe processes in place to address the outages; the new 911 system calls would either be directed to other dispatch centers to answer until such time as the affected dispatch center can get back up and running, or they would move to the county backup center.
COVID 19 Delays
Because of COVID-19, this county-wide 911 project is now on hold. Access to buildings are limited to protect employees from unnecessary exposures. As a result, the decision has been made to suspend in-person meetings and site preparations for the 911 implementations at HVA and the University of Michigan.