Project name
Emergency Alerting System
Value
$100 million (net present value, as at June 2004)
Status
Completed
Department or agency
Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority (ESTA) and the Department of Justice and Regulation.
Private sector partner
VEC Network Pty Ltd a wholly owned Company of ABN AMRO. Leighton Group subsidiary LSE Technology is a major sub-contractor.
Description
In June 2004, VEC Network Pty Ltd was awarded the contract to deliver the Emergency Alerting System (EAS) Project. Under the contract, the VEC Network consortium designed, built, financed and provided support and maintenance services for the system over the 7-year contract term.
The system commenced operation's in November 2005.
The EAS project delivered a dedicated multi-agency pager based messaging system used by: Country Fire Authority (CFA), State Emergency Service (SES) and Ambulance Victoria (AV).
The EAS is a dedicated messaging system which enables the Country Fire Authority (CFA), State Emergency Service (SES) and Ambulance Victoria (AV) regional emergency services staff and volunteers to be simultaneously alerted to incidents via text messages.
The EAS network provides an extremely robust and reliable form of emergency alerting technology. It is also supported by a fully redundant disaster recovery site in Sydney and satellite technology with the capability to broadcast alert messages simultaneously to nearly 40,000 paging devices across Victoria.
The EAS Network comprises 225 sites across regional Victoria providing coverage to nearly 97% of the State, one of the largest networks of its kind in the world.
In November 2012, Visionstream Pty Ltd commenced an Operation's and Maintenance Contract to operate the EAS over a 4-year term.
Under the new contract, Visionstream Pty Ltd (a subsidiary of the Leighton group), is required to undertake a capital re-fresh program for the EAS equipment (including issuing new pagers) and provide ongoing system support and maintenance services.
Contact information
Jim Strilakos
Contract Manager
Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority
Phone: 03 8656 1204
Email: jim.strilakos@esta.vic.gov.au
Related information
Tenders VIC - Emergency Alerting System Project Contract - EAS01