Marwell Zoo is owned by the world renowned, action-oriented charity, Marwell Wildlife. With an aim to conserve global biodiversity and pursue a sustainable future. Situated in the Winchester countryside, Marwell Zoo is a 140-acre wildlife park and home to hundreds of animals, from endangered Amur tigers, snow leopards and white rhinos to giraffes, gibbons and penguins.
Requirements
Marwell has a Hytera radio system, with over 250 radios in use over their 140 acres. They have also invested in sophisticated phone, CCTV and IT systems. Dave Whitehead, IT & Telecoms Manager, recognised the need to integrate these systems to get the most from Marwell’s investment in the technologies.
Dave had four objectives;
- Seamless communication between telephone users and radio users.
- The ability to remotely open gates from radio to allow deliveries and trade visitor access.
- Display radio users’ locations on a map of the site, to any networked PC.
- Text messaging to radio, via desktop PC.
The Solution
Dale Blackman of Nationwide Radio Supplies, supplier of the radio equipment to Marwell, recommended the SMC Gateway V2 as it has support for all the features required out of the box. The Gateway was installed and connected to the phone system, radio system, local IT network and to the gates. Track, SMC Gateway’s GPS tracking application was also supplied. Phone system integration enables calls from radio to internal and external phones and vice versa, supporting both group and private calls. Control of gates allowed them to be opened remotely speeding up deliveries and maintaining the security and health and safety policies. The Track application provided the ability to see where the radio users are at any given time from any device with a web browser, enabling users to identify the closest person for a particular task. Dave himself used the flexible tools in the Gateway to build a messaging application for PC users to send text messages to radio which integrated seamlessly in to their Microsoft Active Directory.”
The Benefits
- Seamless integration between phone and radio users unifies the investment in different communications technologies.
- The ability to see the location of staff means they can be directed to incidents and tasks efficiently.
- Remote control of gates speeds up deliveries whilst supporting Marwell’s security and Health and Safety policies.
- The messaging application improves communication between IT and radio users and prevents misheard audio instructions.
