"Grave disservice"

[R8000]

I have been having trouble trying to follow the discussion about the State of Florida system as mentioned on page 1. Can we keep the discussion on topic please ?

 

[xmo]

You can hold your vendor to strict standards. You have a contract with payment milestones. Things get done right or they don't get paid.

Maybe - maybe - you can trust a consultant to hold their feet to the fire but the best way is to do it in house.

The radio guys do have to know what they are doing and management has to give you the time and resources to do it right .

When we are talking about systems that cost millions of dollars - it's worth it.

You work with the vendor's engineering team to make sure they understand your requirements and you understand their design. You review everything, You approve every statement of work before subs start their parts. You look over shoulders at every step of the way.

Antennas? You get the exact ones you wanted. Line sweeps? Exactly the way you want. You can even arm wrestle them into doing PIM testing.

I have hundreds of pictures documenting the system build. The civil contractor provided hundreds more in their closeout packages.

Rebar? You inspect it before it goes in the ground. Concrete? You watch the pours. A third party guy tests every batch.

When the project is wrapped up, you have a great system that meets user needs and maybe even a public thank-you from the county board for a job well done and staying within budget.

 

[xmo]

Keeping this thread going keeps it visible and hopefully someone close to the project can shed some light on the issue.

The rest of the discussion informs RR readers about the complexities of large systems and procurement.

I'm sure everyone wants to know more.

How big is the Florida state radio dept?

Are they managing the upgrade in-house?

How successful has Harris been at meeting the state's needs with the existing system?

Has the $400 million dollar project proposal documentation been released?

How much of it is an upgrade and how much is new?

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

SNIP

Rebar? You inspect it before it goes in the ground. Concrete? You watch the pours. A third party guy tests every batch.

When the project is wrapped up, you have a great system that meets user needs and maybe even a public thank-you from the county board for a job well done and staying within budget.

View attachment 103620View attachment 103621View attachment 103623

Such an optimistic perfect world!

There was a picture circulating around here from a few years back. I think it was Riviera Beach PD. A hurricane put extreme overturning moment on their self supported tower. One leg pulled completely out of the ground (sandy soil) . Only about 1/4 of the upper portion of that leg had any concrete. It was bare rebar all the rest of the way down. The hole apparently closed in before the pour began. The contractor had to know there was a problem when he sent all those unused concrete trucks home.

 

[DJ11DLN]

Reading this thread reminds me of a meeting I attended several years back when a certain vendor was trying to get all of the VFD's off of our old analog system (which worked fine) and onto the statewide TSYS. Literally right after telling us that we would "always have" our VHF-Hi Dispatch frequency for paging, the sales rep said, "You're not gonna have VHF-Hi at all much longer because they're giving it over to Civil Aviation."

I was literally too shocked to even call him on it.

 

[mmckenna]

I was literally too shocked to even call him on it.

It's amazing how thick they lay on the B.S. sometimes.

 

[6079smithw]

Way back when, I had a shop foreman that had a sticker on his tool rollaway: "The Only Dope Worth Shooting is Salesmen and Bean Counters"
He hated them both with a passion and as I got older I could understand why...

 

[xmo]

the sales rep said, "You're not gonna have VHF-Hi at all much longer because they're giving it over to Civil Aviation."
----------------------
There are scoundrels in every field. You can't let them get to you. Just turn things around and say:

'Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I must have missed it. If you can provide us with a copy of the FCC R&O, we can put that in our IJ documentation and get this project moving because, I am afraid, without that, we will simply have to stay right where we are.'

If it's B.S. you won't hear from him again.

I can't even imaging the behind doors goings-on in a project the size of Florida.

IIRC, Florida had a Motorola system back in the day and the SLERS project went to the other company - CCS or whatever name they went by at that time.

Motorola fought it that time too and got no where. Harder still now with an entrenched system.

I was hoping some of you 4-landers close to the situation would fill us in.

 

[bharvey2]

the sales rep said, "You're not gonna have VHF-Hi at all much longer because they're giving it over to Civil Aviation."
----------------------
There are scoundrels in every field. You can't let them get to you. Just turn things around and say:

'Thank you for bringing that to our attention. I must have missed it. If you can provide us with a copy of the FCC R&O, we can put that in our IJ documentation and get this project moving because, I am afraid, without that, we will simply have to stay right where we are.'

If it's B.S. you won't hear from him again.

I can't even imaging the behind doors goings-on in a project the size of Florida.

IIRC, Florida had a Motorola system back in the day and the SLERS project went to the other company - CCS or whatever name they went by at that time.

Motorola fought it that time too and got no where. Harder still now with an entrenched system.

I was hoping some of you 4-landers close to the situation would fill us in.

Very good point. Whenever the B.S. meter goes off, ask for it in writing. It's an excellent tool to weed out the nonsense.

 

[clbsquared]

Such an optimistic perfect world!

There was a picture circulating around here from a few years back. I think it was Riviera Beach PD. A hurricane put extreme overturning moment on their self supported tower. One leg pulled completely out of the ground (sandy soil) . Only about 1/4 of the upper portion of that leg had any concrete. It was bare rebar all the rest of the way down. The hole apparently closed in before the pour began. The contractor had to know there was a problem when he sent all those unused concrete trucks home.

Likely caused by the slump being wrong and it bridged up over the rebar structure. But yeah, if 3 out of 4 holes take 8 yards of concrete and 1 hole only takes 2, that would be a red flag that something isn’t quite right.

Reading this thread reminds me of a meeting I attended several years back when a certain vendor was trying to get all of the VFD's off of our old analog system (which worked fine) and onto the statewide TSYS. Literally right after telling us that we would "always have" our VHF-Hi Dispatch frequency for paging, the sales rep said, "You're not gonna have VHF-Hi at all much longer because they're giving it over to Civil Aviation."

I was literally too shocked to even call him on it.

Sounds like a similar situation I ran into. When I asked the Motorola rep why we couldn’t just stay on VHF and go P25. We already had enough frequency pairs on our license to do so. As well as the fact that we received a grant from the state a year earlier that allowed us to purchase a few dozen APX6000’s in VHF. His answer was “P25 isn’t available in VHF, you have to go to 700/800 to get P25”.
My response, “Soo the state police is just pretending to talk on P25 VHF”?
He immediately realized at that point that he wa no longer the smartest person in that room. Maybe he thought his arrogance somehow afforded him the right to think he could pull the wool over the eyes of a small county. Unfortunately my cries of “were getting ripped off” fell on deaf ears. As they had already buffaloed the powers that be.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Likely caused by the slump being wrong and it bridged up over the rebar structure. But yeah, if 3 out of 4 holes take 8 yards of concrete and 1 hole only takes 2, that would be a red flag that something isn’t quite right.


Sounds like a similar situation I ran into. When I asked the Motorola rep why we couldn’t just stay on VHF and go P25. We already had enough frequency pairs on our license to do so. As well as the fact that we received a grant from the state a year earlier that allowed us to purchase a few dozen APX6000’s in VHF. His answer was “P25 isn’t available in VHF, you have to go to 700/800 to get P25”.
My response, “Soo the state police is just pretending to talk on P25 VHF”?
He immediately realized at that point that he wa no longer the smartest person in that room. Maybe he thought his arrogance somehow afforded him the right to think he could pull the wool over the eyes of a small county. Unfortunately my cries of “were getting ripped off” fell on deaf ears. As they had already buffaloed the powers that be.

I had an old client with an analog SN II 800 system send me a copy of the /\/\ quote to refresh the police fleet with new radios. I pointed out that the quote was for digital equipped radios (P25 CAI) and that neither they nor any surrounding agencies had P25 systems and that well over a half million dollars could be saved by simply changing the order to "digital ready" radios and they could always flash them later (if required). They spent the money anyway. Then some years later the system was up for replacement (Mixed mode 3600 SZ P25 CAI) and the city comission letter stated that that a sole source procurement was justified because of the "FCC Digital Mandate". Those P25 CAI radios? They got replaced again. Never used in P25 mode. They are on their third system now.

 

[clbsquared]

I had an old client with an analog SN II 800 system send me a copy of the /\/\ quote to refresh the police fleet with new radios. I pointed out that the quote was for digital equipped radios (P25 CAI) and that neither they nor any surrounding agencies had P25 systems and that well over a half million dollars could be saved by simply changing the order to "digital ready" radios and they could always flash them later (if required). They spent the money anyway. Then some years later the system was up for replacement (Mixed mode 3600 SZ P25 CAI) and the city comission letter stated that that a sole source procurement was justified because of the "FCC Digital Mandate". Those P25 CAI radios? They got replaced again. Never used in P25 mode. They are on their third system now.

We live in a throw away society. And it’s easy to do it with OPM. SMH

 

[DJ11DLN]

Likely caused by the slump being wrong and it bridged up over the rebar structure. But yeah, if 3 out of 4 holes take 8 yards of concrete and 1 hole only takes 2, that would be a red flag that something isn’t quite right.


Sounds like a similar situation I ran into. When I asked the Motorola rep why we couldn’t just stay on VHF and go P25. We already had enough frequency pairs on our license to do so. As well as the fact that we received a grant from the state a year earlier that allowed us to purchase a few dozen APX6000’s in VHF. His answer was “P25 isn’t available in VHF, you have to go to 700/800 to get P25”.
My response, “Soo the state police is just pretending to talk on P25 VHF”?
He immediately realized at that point that he wa no longer the smartest person in that room. Maybe he thought his arrogance somehow afforded him the right to think he could pull the wool over the eyes of a small county. Unfortunately my cries of “were getting ripped off” fell on deaf ears. As they had already buffaloed the powers that be.

My input at that meeting was neither welcome nor desired. I discovered later that things at the County level had already been decided, it was just a matter of how many radios each Dept. could afford but we had to get equipped. My intended function was to help convince the people back home that we needed to spend all of this money, which I refused to do. And when I tried to tell some folks in my own Dept that I'd checked and discovered most of what he told us to be Bravo Sierra, nobody wanted to believe me or look it up for themselves. Eyes dazzled by new gear...this was ca. 2009-ish and the old VHF analog repeater is still working just fine.

I'm just as happy to be on the "retired list" these days.

 

[mmckenna]

...Eyes dazzled by new gear...

I think we've all seen this happen a lot. It isn't about need, it's about want.

-or-

"You guys must hate public safety and want us all to die if you won't buy us a fully tricked out APX8000's", even though no one else in the county used anything other than VHF analog.

 

[clbsquared]

I think we've all seen this happen a lot. It isn't about need, it's about want.

-or-

"You guys must hate public safety and want us all to die if you won't buy us a fully tricked out APX8000's", even though no one else in the county used anything other than VHF analog.

And there’s a whole lot of HT1250’s still in service IN the fire service.

 

[xmo]

R8000 is right. We're getting pretty far from the original subject:

"Circumventing the state’s own procurement process and attempting to interrupt a competitive bid through proviso would do a grave disservice to the first responders who rely on mission-critical radio communications to save lives and protect our communities each and every day."

The fact that there are a lot of HT1250s in service isn't related to large trunked systems which do provide the users with many benefits.

Pretty much every state has one and I think this discussion has shown some of the complexities that make them expensive - but to the point:

If anyone wants to make the case that a contract does the first responders a 'grave disservice' they would have to prove a substantial deficiency of some sort.

Paying too much would be doing the taxpayers a disservice, but this implies that - for the same money - the state could have had a superior solution for the users.

In large system terms, superior would mean coverage, reliability, or function.

If the existing SLERS or the proposed upgrade has any such issues, no one has come forward here to identify them.

 

[mmckenna]

If anyone wants to make the case that a contract does the first responders a 'grave disservice' they would have to prove a substantial deficiency of some sort.

Paying too much would be doing the taxpayers a disservice, but this implies that - for the same money - the state could have had a superior solution for the users.

Which is pretty much what we've all been saying.

Motorola is playing games here and trying to cast doubt on the decision. The hypocrisy mentioned in the first post is calling out exactly that. While Motorola loves to play these sorts of games, they've done the exact same thing hundreds of times across the country. They are just butt hurt because it didn't work in their favor this time.

I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola keeps throwing temper tantrums about this. At least it's kind of entertaining to watch, especially if they finally get their 'comeuppance' that they so rightly deserve.

 

[mmckenna]

Motorola Solutions asks Florida governor to veto SLERS tower plans, shrink scope of new radio purchase - Urgent Comms

Motorola Solutions has asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to veto tower-leasing line items in the proposed state budget and reduce the number of replacement radios provided to agencies using the Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System (SLERS), describing the budget’s no-bid P25 award to L3Harris as...

urgentcomm.com

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Basically Motorola is saying the decision is bad for first responders and at same time telling Desantis to scale back coverage sites and new radios. Hypocritical as usual.

 

[mmckenna]

Basically Motorola is saying the decision is bad for first responders and at same time telling Desantis to scale back coverage sites and new radios. Hypocritical as usual.

I had a meeting today with Harris. Towards the end I said "Hey, so hows it going in Florida?"

They said "Very well….."

Essentially they agreed (no surprise) that Motorola was throwing a fit because they didn't get to pull this stunt first. They had agreed to the contract, then decided not to sign at the last minute. They got called on it and now they realize they screwed up. As usual, blame it on someone else…