West Sussex and Surrey Fire and Rescue services have come together for a digital transformation project that will see both units’ IT operations move to the cloud. 

The first phase of the endeavour will see the two agencies move to an Infographics platform called FireWatch, which is a fully managed cloud delivery and maintenance model running on Microsoft’s Azure platform.

Infographics said the FireWatch Cloud platform will provide a range of benefits to both fire and rescue services, including a connected application for integrated HR, payment, training and development, fleet monitoring and staff availability systems. It will also provide flexible and remote access to their fire service management system, including full management and upgrades, the company claimed.

At the same time as moving to FireWatch Cloud, West Sussex and Surrey fire services will also be moving to a joint control operation using the Vision mobilisation and control platform from Capita. Phase two of the project will see Infographics deploy a single interface, with FireWatch processing live incident data from Capita Vision.

Jon Lacey, West Sussex Fire and Rescue’s acting deputy chief fire officer, said that working in collaboration with the team in Surrey enables them both to become more effective and efficient as a service, as well as opening up the possibility of future collaboration.

«The opportunity to work in collaboration with Infographics and Surrey Fire and Rescue Service will transform the way we mobilise our assets to emergency incidents and provide improved support to our teams across our service,» he said.