Courtesy of City of Dublin
Communications supervisor Katie Edwards trainstechnician Ashley Hayes at NRECC.
“We don’t just dispatch police cars and fire trucks. We don’t just answer 911 calls. We ensure the safety, service and security of your communities.”
That’s what Jay Somerville shares about the devoted 911 dispatchers working at the Northwest Regional Emergency Communications Center, known as NRECC, headquartered at the Dublin Justice Center. As the center’s bureau commander, Somerville points out that the public might not know exactly what dispatchers do. Communications technicians, as they’re known at NRECC, are the “first first-responders” for someone seeking help, he says. Taking 911 calls, being a calm voice, and sending out the appropriate team of first responders to a person’s exact location is the fast-paced, decisive business of dispatching.
If you’ve had to call 911 while in Dublin, Hilliard, Upper Arlington or Worthington recently, you’ve been connected with a dispatcher from NRECC who has worked in a matter of minutes to link you with the right resources. While NRECC as a consolidated center has only served this area since 2013, it has continued to add new fire and police department partners in that time, and just completed staffing the organization with dispatchers and a new leadership structure this year.
NRECC’s Beginnings
While 911 seems synonymous with calling for help, Franklin County residents have only been able to dial those three numbers for assistance since 1987, after state legislation created the three-digit emergency calling system that was put in place in the county that year.
“The joke is I was 911 before there was a 911,” Somerville says of his three decades dispatching.
He explains as emergency response time has been drastically reduced during his career — like cutting the phone number from 10 digits to three — dispatchers have had to act more and more like air traffic controllers to rapidly manage the resources needed on a scene and to provide the most accurate information available.
“The dispatcher isn’t just a pass-through; they’re an actual coordinator of emergency response,” Somerville says. “Today, we are getting detailed information from callers, we’re providing them … medical instructions, we’re providing them safety and security instructions. As the first-first responder, callers rely on us.”
NRECC’s consolidated structure began with discussions in 2012 when the City of Dublin was asked by neighboring suburbs to consider serving as the single answering point for other regional agencies, something that would provide faster service for the area’s residents. At the time, the City was only dispatching for Dublin Police and the Washington Township Fire Department.
Somerville notes how the concept of housing dispatchers at one 911 center aligns with Dublin’s mission of providing quality dispatching in order to improve the overall police and fire/EMS services throughout the community. One center would mean having one high standard of quality for all the communities, he says.
Once Dublin started to build its center by dispatching for the Norwich Township Fire Department in 2013 and adding Hilliard Police several months later in 2014, the growth kept pace with Upper Arlington Police and Fire coming online in the next three years and Worthington Police and Fire joining NRECC in 2020.
“We partner with like-minded agencies that are heavily involved in service, heavily rooted in providing protection,” Somerville says. He notes the high level of trust agencies put in NRECC to operate in the interest of all the communities it serves and not just for the City of Dublin, where the center is located.
NRECC’s community-oriented spirit has even been evident in how the center got its name, with the City of Dublin choosing to incorporate an independent name for the Northwest region rather than just calling it “Dublin’s 911 Center.”
“It seems like a small thing, but [consolidated 911] centers that identify as dispatchers for all their communities and not primarily for one just operate better,” Somerville says. “They have a better mindset.”
Growing a Team
As NRECC has onboarded new partner agencies and begun to serve more and more residents — approximately 145,000 people — cultivating and training a larger crew of communications technicians to answer those 911 calls has been top priority. This summer, the NRECC team became fully staffed, bringing its makeup to 29 communications technicians, six supervisors, three managers, one operations manager and Somerville as technical services bureau commander.
Now with a robust group of employees, Operations Manager Stephen Mette says members can more completely explore NRECC’s mission of “How do we serve best?” Running at full capacity also means the new leadership team can help conduct more in-depth training to serve that mission and focus on continued professional development for all.
“The team that I have to work with consistently impresses me, are great performers, takes so much pride in what they do, and consistently cares,” Mette says.
Communications Manager Lauren Yankanin relishes NRECC’s 90% retention of its dispatchers. She says people are excited to work for the City of Dublin as an employer and come from other centers for NRECC’s top-notch technology and the support from the community partners.
“They’re also a tenacious group of people,” Yankanin notes about the communication technicians’ commitment to service. “They will go as far as they can to get any bit of information or complete a task, or whatever the case may be, to fulfill a need that a responder or citizen has; they’ll go after it and just keep going until they get the job done.”
That comes in part from NRECC’s intensive training program — a five-phased, six-month initial training for new communication technicians. Somerville explains with the new leadership structure in place, dispatchers can focus on their training and supervisors can support broader decision-making and solve issues like technology difficulties or severe weather response.
Somerville says a majority of the telecommunicators who have been hired have a variety of experience in the industry, but he aims to “hire for a sense character.” If someone has a call to helping others, “I can teach you the skills” for success on the job, he notes.
“The talent of the people we have and their ability to take chaos and turn it into a direct response is a talent that’s hard to teach,” Somerville says, “but anyone who has that drive for public service understands how to take that chaos and … give the best possible response in service we can give.”
Next Generation 911
An average 911 call for NRECC is 1:43 seconds, and any way to make that shorter and find out more information, like someone’s location, ahead of time is where NRECC is headed.
Operations Manager Mette talks about the many technological changes coming to the 911 landscape, some of which NRECC has already embraced. Known as “Next Generation 911,” public service answering points nationwide are envisioning how to best connect cellphone calls with the right cell tower; this is necessary, so a 911 call goes to the proper center, greatly improving response time during emergencies.
Cellphones work differently than landlines, and not being able to easily trace the internet of things (IOT), or items that use WiFi but aren’t tied to a phone number, makes things harder for 911. With dispatching centers working to iron out these technological hurdles, there are ways citizens can help.
NRECC uses Smart911, an app-based service that allows users to create a Safety Profile, including information about their household, medical conditions, family contact information and more, so a 911 dispatcher taking a call from someone with this app on their phone can automatically receive those details upon pickup. Find Smart911 through the App Store or Google Play.
Route to Reaccreditation
The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, or CALEA, is known as the “gold standard” to public safety employees around the country. This November, NRECC is seeking reaccreditation from the commission, which will demonstrate the center is operating from an extensive list of standards.
Yankanin says this type of certification is a “source of pride” for NRECC, which is constantly reevaluating its service. The CALEA process keeps the group accountable to stay updated in an ever-evolving world of 911 technology.
“What it means to those that we serve is that we are consistently taking a look at all of our processes, policies, procedures — making sure that we fall in line with those best practices,” she says. “Those best practices then help us provide the very best service that we possibly can to those communities.”
As part of this process, CALEA assessors want to hear feedback from the communities NRECC dispatchers serve. This year, there will be a virtual town hall meeting and email options for public comment about the center’s 911 dispatching services. Follow @NWRECC on Twitter or the City of Dublin’s social media accounts for more information this fall to let your voice be heard.
Rebecca Myers is a public information officer for the City of Dublin. Feedback welcome at rrmyers@dublin.oh.us
