Hutt City Council has just signed on to Kordia’s new, integrated digital two-way radio network: KorKor™.

After completing their annual risk assessment, Hutt City Council identified health and safety as an area to work on. Field staff members – primarily animal services and parking services teams – often face difficult situations and the council needed a means of tracking staff members, who in turn needed a means of alerting other staff and the police if they were in trouble.

Geoff Stuart, divisional manager of inspections at Hutt City Council explains: “We went through a self-awareness and self protection course, and looked into various solutions. It was when we investigated the panic alarm button that we came across the Kordia solution. KorKor™ was much better value than the other offerings and it included a panic button, tracking, RT and cell phone functionality. For us, the tracking and emergency button are crucial.”

KorKor™ was selected because it enhanced the health and safety of council field staff through its integrated GPS tracking and emergency alert features; available in both the portable and in-vehicle radio units. The small size and ruggedness of the portable radios, digital call clarity and the ability to reduce the number of mobile phones were also seen as key benefits.

The full set of KorKor™ features (including radio push-to-talk, GPS tracking, telephony, seamless roaming, emergency man-down button, security and privacy, short data service, and open calling talk groups) has been enabled under the premium plan for nearly all the portable radios, supplemented with two office-based terminals.

Hutt City Council has been operating KorKor™’s digital radio network for just a few weeks, and already its advanced functionality has been utilised.

“A parking warden recently had cause to push the panic button. We had staff there within one and a half minutes and the police followed soon after”, Geoff says. "When the emergency button is pushed, the police are alerted, which really improves response times.”

In the future, Hutt City Council is looking to connect KorKor™ to other existing radio networks using Motobridge (a Motorola interoperability product).  This will enable them to connect to civil emergency groups or any other radio networks that need to communicate with the council in case of civil emergencies.

“We have 23 handsets currently and we will most likely roll it out to more staff working on their own and all of our night staff.”