Kern County approves massive $177M upgrade to emergency responder communications system

[chrismol1]

Didn't Harris put up the same or similar objections in Texas or Florida or somewheres. Sounds like they need to up their game when dealing with the big dog.

Aaron Williams of L3 Harris Technologies addressed the board with his concerns about the process.
“We struggled to get information and public information requests up until the last minute,” Williams said. “We noticed conversations were happening outside our point of single contact.”

Emergency communication center to get $177 million makeover

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – The Kern County Board of Supervisors is set to vote Tuesday on whether to award what is thought to be the largest single contract in county history: $177 million for a …

www.kget.com

The other bidder, Florida-based L3 Harris Technologies, reportedly submitted a bid of $172 million. Aaron Williams, L3’s vice president of sales, who plans to address the board Tuesday, said the selection process didn’t go as the company was led to believe.
“Things that procurement told us how they would do,” he said, “have all been kind of bypassed or not done as they said.

 

[mmckenna]

Didn't Harris put up the same or similar objections in Texas or Florida or somewheres. Sounds like they need to up their game when dealing with the big dog.

Emergency communication center to get $177 million makeover

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) – The Kern County Board of Supervisors is set to vote Tuesday on whether to award what is thought to be the largest single contract in county history: $177 million for a …

www.kget.com

Yes, however the other company involved has been known to do shady $#!T, in fact, some do believe that said company wrote the book on this. Also, many of these large agencies are known to have picked vendors before the bidding processes start and have been known to help their preferred vendor.

NOT saying that is what happened here, but this sort of stuff goes on all the time, and both vendors play this game. Everyone is in it for the money and a lot of agencies are only concerned about seeing their favorite brand name on the radios, not how much taxpayer dollars they spend.

Purchasing departments are supposed to keep this sort of stuff on the level. They may have done that here, and the award may be based on price + qualification points. It wouldn't matter how this went down, the other big dog is going to complain. If L3H won, Motorola would have identical complaints. This game gets played out all the time. This is a lot of money and neither party is going to give up easily.

If it smells like rotten fish, it's probably because it's rotten fish.


Taxpayers are a mere annoyance in large projects like this.

 

[tsalmrsystemtech]

Just saw it on the news, wonder if anything in the contract talks about encryption of it.

Of course there will be for sure. CLETS. DOJ mandate. No new system upgrades to any city or county in California comes without the BIG "E" moving forward.

 

[Progline]

Does the contract cover maintenance of the system too once the warranty period expires? I wonder if one of the selling points of this is that Kern County can realize 'budget savings' by eliminating County Communications staff? I remember asking this with the Inyo County P25 system too.

 

[TampaTyron]

I am sure there is a generous Moto contract involved. Only an idiot gets rid of their in house guys (and I write quotes for customers to get rid of their in house guys and use mine all the time). TT

 

[mmckenna]

I am sure there is a generous Moto contract involved. Only an idiot gets rid of their in house guys (and I write quotes for customers to get rid of their in house guys and use mine all the time). TT

I agree. Knowing the radio system is only part of the challenge. Knowing the sites, knowing the operational area, knowing all the individual people that actually know how to get things done, and know how to get around the political/bureaucratic BS is often a bigger part of the job. Replacing all them with contract techs usually doesn't go down very well.

 

[Eng74]

I don’t think they are going to get rid of county radio services. They do all the installs on vehicles, the county microwave system, they still have lots of work to do.

 

[TampaTyron]

Having done this before as a shop and end user: The end users and shop contract out all of the "grunt work". The secret is "anything" can be grunt work.

Chapter 1,
First mobile installs and upfitting. Next the physical racking and stacking. Then the late night/weekend service calls. Then consoles. Then the microwave and fiber maintenance. Then system upgrades. Then system maintenance. Then...... "Mr Customer, Why do you have a shop full of guys not doing anything?"

Chapter 2,
"Why are we paying a vendor to do all this work? We should do it ourselves and save money. We would also not be held at gunpoint by a vendor."

Cycle starts again.

TT

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I agree. Knowing the radio system is only part of the challenge. Knowing the sites, knowing the operational area, knowing all the individual people that actually know how to get things done, and know how to get around the political/bureaucratic BS is often a bigger part of the job. Replacing all them with contract techs usually doesn't go down very well.

I had an opportunity to visit their sites and speak with staff at Kern County some years ago. I assume this is the same system today. They were on about their 6th generation of simulcast technologies and very knowledgeable about what was required to cover that large county.

 

[tsalmrsystemtech]

I had an opportunity to visit their sites and speak with staff at Kern County some years ago. I assume this is the same system today. They were on about their 6th generation of simulcast technologies and very knowledgeable about what was required to cover that large county.

If San Bernardino County has figured it out then Kern County will figure it out. Obviously SBDCO is evening a larger county. Bigger than some states put together.

 

[Eng74]

I had an opportunity to visit their sites and speak with staff at Kern County some years ago. I assume this is the same system today. They were on about their 6th generation of simulcast technologies and very knowledgeable about what was required to cover that large county.

Our county radio guys are great. I had to take an engine to Control 5 to get a VHF radio put in when we made the switch from UHF to VHF. I had brought my Pro-96 with me at the time, that tells you how long ago it was, so I could atleast hear what was going on when I was on the way there. They started asking me how the new system was in Ridgecrest and the repeater they put on B Mountain.

 

[64larry]

The County of Kern approved $177 million dollars to improve and convert their analog communications sytem to P25 phase 2 Simulcast. This have 51 cell sites installed and new radios, both in car and HTs. This is the second largest budget the county supervisors have approved, I'm sure they might be starting construction very soon. Currently, the County of Kern has several Sheriff and fire frequencies and county services on analog and the system is becoming out dated. I don't think everything will cut over all at once. It's just my belief it will be done in phases. I don't have any information of new frequencies or they may use the one's current.

 

[1979lee]

The big question is Will it be encrypted? aka hidden from the people

 

[ScannerDude244]

Kern County approves massive $177M upgrade to emergency responder communications system

Didn't Harris put up the same or similar objections in Texas or Florida or somewheres. Sounds like they need to up their game when dealing with the big dog. Aaron Williams of L3 Harris Technologies addressed the board with his concerns about the process. “We struggled to get information and...

forums.radioreference.com

 

[f40ph]

The big question is Will it be encrypted? aka hidden from the people

Of course E will be built in (it's not that expensive anymore). The bigger question is will it be 100% E or will some TGs be in the clear like SBCo did.

 

[es93546]

I agree. Knowing the radio system is only part of the challenge. Knowing the sites, knowing the operational area, knowing all the individual people that actually know how to get things done, and know how to get around the political/bureaucratic BS is often a bigger part of the job. Replacing all them with contract techs usually doesn't go down very well.

After 3 decades with the federal government it was hard to keep hearing, "contracting is ALWAYS more cost effective." It was simply not true in all cases. During the George W. Bush admin the Forest Service got rid of nearly all of its radio techs based on some funny math - changing the paper reality to meet the outcome admin wanted rather than the reality on the ground. Every National Forest had a radio tech, then they combined and got rid of positions so that about every 5 or more Forests had radio techs. Guess what? They are pretty much back to one per National Forest once again.

I had seen enough of contracting after 2-3 years in the Forest Service to come up with the phrase "Contracting? That is half the job for twice the price." You can't contract out dedication, commitment to the mission of the agency and being a involved member of local communities like agency personnel tend to be. Contractors don't know the road system, the climate, the vegetation, their customers, the people they deal with and really could not care less what the long term quality of a task well done is. Well, they actually know sometimes, but they really don't care, it's all about how numbers show up on a spreadsheet and nothing else at all matters.

I know that this doesn't meet everyone's political philosophy, but three decades of observations and having to do the work of contractors over gives me a poor view of philosophies that work on paper and nowhere else.

 

[AM909]

... You can't contract out dedication, commitment to the mission of the agency and being a involved member of local communities like agency personnel tend to be. ...

Not always. There are plenty of contractors who do care about the mission and do a good job for agencies and the people they serve in places that are too small to justify the staff to do it themselves (obviously not the case with the subject of this thread – I don't know what the thinking is there).

 

[es93546]

Not always. There are plenty of contractors who do care about the mission and do a good job for agencies and the people they serve in places that are too small to justify the staff to do it themselves (obviously not the case with the subject of this thread – I don't know what the thinking is there).

I agree that some tasks are done better by contractors. Two examples from the last place I worked, trash collection and vault toilet pumping. The expense of buying specialized trucks, having employees certified/licensed to drive and operate that equipment for what was just a portion of the total workload did not make sense to spend the money. We had good contractors for both of those functions that were part of the resort community and wanted to do a good job making recreation use possible. Recreation use made up more than 70% of the county's economy. I knew the personnel who worked for both companies as well as their owners and they were good, dedicated individuals who I could trust.

This is the flip side of the coin that I outlined in my previous post. We also had electronic tech contractors that did a good job for the U.S. Forest Service, who helped out with a lot of the field programming and repair of radios since the Forest Service tech could not get everything done. These contractors had been in the area for decades and were interested in helping the agency do its job. Generally, they would work the busy part of the fire season only. I could go on to comparing different jobs between in house and contractor employees, but this is enough.

 

[INDY72]

P25 TYPE 2Noooooooooooooooooooo! well guess its chp only for me,i cant spend 600$ fo a p25 t2 scanner

And remember, once the CRIS is built out CHP will be full time encrypted on it.

 

[Calicrook]

Of course E will be built in (it's not that expensive anymore). The bigger question is will it be 100% E or will some TGs be in the clear like SBCo did.

Going to make a lot of those streamers upset when their livelihoods are ripped out from under them. Never did care for people live streaming someone’s misery on Facebook etc.. I get people are naturally curious but some of it is just plain ridiculous.