Latest / The Wilmac Wire / Duncan Swan | British APCO and the Global Future of Emergency Communications
Transcript
- Emily McNulty: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, welcome or welcome back to the Wilmac Wire. Today we have our first UK-based guest in season three joining us from Hampshire, England. So it was a really fun conversation that gave us a perspective on public safety and emergency communications that we don't typically get on the show. So today you're gonna hear from Duncan Swan, Chief Operations Officer of British APGO, otherwise known as BAPGO, which is the UK's leading association for public safety communications professionals. We chatted a lot about Duncan's career journey and some of the really cool stories he has in the industry as he built up experience and kind of fell into the public safety comms space. And really what I found powerful was the message he shared about the through line of challenges and the unique. I guess unique perspectives that a lot of the different countries, Nina, APCO, ENA, the different public safety communications groups around the world, how powerful it is when they come together and the ideas that you can take from that that Duncan has taken back to British APO. So thank you so much to Duncan for joining us on the podcast. I'm excited to meet him in person at some point at an upcoming conference. But before I hand it over to the to today's episode, I do have to shout out Julie and Tracy from British Apco for being on our pod a few months back for for Nina and getting to meet them and connecting me with Duncan. So thank you so much to that team over at British ApgO. And I'll I'll just pass it over to today's episode with Duncan Swan of the Will MacWire. Thanks for joining us. All right, we're gonna get things started today. So, joining us from across the pond in Hampshire, England, he's an electronics engineering grad from the University of Sheffield. He spent over a decade at Phillips Communication Systems before co founding Mason Advisory, which is one of the UK's leading public safety technology consultants. He now serves as the Chief Operations Officer of British APCO, the UK's leading association for public safety communications professionals. Welcome to the Will MacWire. Duncan Slawn. Duncan, thanks for joining us. Duncan Swan: Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Emily McNulty: Wonderful. Okay, well, thanks for joining us today. Like we said, across the pond, major time difference. I've already called that out, that I've I've struggled with that. but Duncan Swan: You Emily McNulty: we're gonna kick things off, Duncan, with a brief icebreaker that we like to call this or that. I have three questions for you, two options in each question. Choose your preference and share a little bit of context as to why. So Duncan Swan: Okay. Emily McNulty: We're gonna start things off with in the country or in the city. Which do you prefer? Duncan Swan: Great question. In the country if I was going to choose between the two it's a sort of 49-51 split. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Okay. Northeast. Duncan Swan: I grew up in the North East, so my Emily McNulty: Okay. Duncan Swan: formative days were up in the North East of England, up and around Newcastle. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: I was there from about the age of five to 17, nearly 18 when I went to Sheffield to university. So since then I've been yo-yoing up and down England. So I was actually born down south, moved up to the North East, came to Sheffield, came to Cambridge, back to Manchester, Hampshire. So, here we go. Stephen McDonnell: How how how close is Hampshire to London? Duncan Swan: So we're about 35-40 miles to the sort of south, south-west of London. So about an hour on the train. Close enough, but far enough away. It is beautiful countryside around here. Absolutely beautiful countryside. Emily McNulty: Wonderful. Stephen McDonnell: How often do you get into London? Duncan Swan: used to do every day. I do not miss that. I do not miss that at all. Emily McNulty: really? Yeah, that coming out. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: So it's every couple of weeks, know, at least once a month. yeah, commute Emily McNulty: Okay. Duncan Swan: was a killer. Stephen McDonnell: we have an employee, Emily McNulty: sorry, let's see if Stephen McDonnell: one of our sales engineers, he lives in Derby. Yep. Just moved back Duncan Swan: Okay. Stephen McDonnell: to just moved he's he's British. He just moved back there, him and his Duncan Swan: Okay. Stephen McDonnell: wife and moved moved to Derby. Like that's really not that close to London. Duncan Swan: It's not, no no, it's reasonably close to Sheffield actually. Again a beautiful part of the country, you've got the city of Derby, quite a other cities around about in in the East Midlands there, so Nottingham, Leicester, but very close to the Peak District. So if you like getting out and about, the Peak District's the place to go from Derby, it's beautiful. Stephen McDonnell: Right. Emily McNulty: Very nice. I've already learned up so much about the the geography and I'm not a geography person. So Duncan Swan: you Emily McNulty: wonderful. all right, Duncan, next question for you. Premier League or rugby? Duncan Swan: Premier League. Emily McNulty: Yeah, with your team. Duncan Swan: That's easy. I'm a referee. I actually referee kids soccer. It's Stephen McDonnell: But Emily McNulty: okay. Yeah. Duncan Swan: USA kids football over here. Yeah, I coach my lads team from under-9s to under-16s. He took the refereeing course, I took the refereeing course about four or five years ago. Stopped coaching and I referee now most Saturdays. I also, part of our local North East Tans football league, I'm one of the committee members there and I look after this year the under-16s. So I've got 60 under-16 teams that I set fixtures for. to come in. If I get a few bad ones I'll pop out and refer to their matches and just see what they really like. By the way it's my exercise mode, my once a week exercise. know can get about 10, 11,000 steps in. It's great. Emily McNulty: me ask. Duncan Swan: What was Premier League? Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: Okay, got it. Yeah, so so Steve and I were both college athletes. We played basketball though. And Duncan Swan: No. Emily McNulty: I know my love of refs is not that deep. How is your Duncan Swan: you Emily McNulty: experience refereeing and like dealing with parents and that sort of thing? Duncan Swan: That's fine. mean, one of the reasons I also like refereeing, especially when teams have got a little reputation, is to see what it's like because we have kids out there, 15, 16, 17 year old to referee. It's great for them to do it, but some of the abuse they get is just Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: unwarranted. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: You know, it's totally unnecessary. Kids out there, he's managing 22 players. In fact, you know, if you've got 15 in the squad, there's 30 players. You've probably got at least two coaches a team. So you've got four, maybe six adults at the side. You've then got all the kids' parents, you know. So you're talking to another 40, 50 parents on the other side. And you've got a lad or a girl for that matter out in the middle, refereeing the match, doing their best, making decisions, you know, and they've got a split second to make a decision. It's not always easy. go, you know, if they don't see something, they can't give something. in the back of your head. I always think for those youngsters who do get out and referee boys and girls, you know, they learn so much about themselves, they learn so much about being able to be in pressurised situations, making decisions and sticking by their decisions. And when they see bad behaviour, actually just say no, stop. It's unacceptable. And that's character building, I think in some ways is what you would call it. But I think it's great for those Emily McNulty: Yes. Duncan Swan: who do. it. really do. Emily McNulty: Yeah, that's one Stephen McDonnell: I little known fact, Emily, I don't think you knew this, I umpired in for baseball Emily McNulty: really? Stephen McDonnell: games during high school for extra money. and Emily McNulty: Really. Stephen McDonnell: it it was an interesting perspective, that's for sure. I mean I I was Duncan Swan: Uh-huh. Stephen McDonnell: a teenager and adults were screaming at me. Emily McNulty: Yeah, I was just saying refs take a battering. So Duncan, I appreciate that Duncan Swan: Yeah. Emily McNulty: perspective. It it is character development for sure, but Duncan Swan: Yeah. Emily McNulty: yeah, that's that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. okay, and then last one, a little bit more related to work, but I'm sure you're in both of these rooms often, but boardroom meetings or conferences. Duncan Swan: gosh. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: the top one. Duncan Swan: You learning them both. learning them both. If I had to make a choice on a particular day, whether it's the boardroom or a conference, I don't it's good, interesting conference, it be a conference because there's learning, there's networking, there's talking, there's doing stuff. And you do get a lot of that in the boardroom. You should do, where board meetings are run well, you know, there should be learning, there should be sharing of ideas, but conferences are bigger and... you can learn so much from just going out and listening and networking. It's not always listening to the person speak at the time, but talking afterwards and catching up, making those connections. You learn a lot. You learn an awful lot. So at my point in time in life, I'll take a conference over the boardroom. Emily McNulty: Very cool. And let me ask too, so I know we we had talked about about before recording that we were both in in San Antonio at Apco. Like what is the coolest place that a conference has taken you? Duncan Swan: Wow, I love Nashville. went to Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: the Nena conference, the APCO conference in Nashville a few years back. That was brilliant. Sunday morning, 10 o'clock, walking down Broadway, we're looking for something for brunch. We weren't looking for beer and music, but you know what, we got beer and music and we got brunch. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: It was brilliant but there's some great European cities as well. I love Ljubljana in Slovenia and I out in Riga this year at Latvia for the INA conference and again that was great. Stephen McDonnell: What what's the setup in Europe? So do they do the same sort of thing, one big APCO and one big Nina per year? Duncan Swan: So they have one big, so Ena and Nina are sort of European and North American. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, okay. Duncan Swan: Nina is a lot bigger than Ena, but Ena has their one conference in the year. have, again, of workshops during the year, lots of opportunities for people to join and learn and see what's going on. But they have their one big one, which is normally... It's only three days, know, with pretty good confidence. The confidence that they do is brilliant. So there's always lots to learn, you know, going to that. From APCO perspective, again, APCO internationally is, you know, it's the big one. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: APCO Canada, British APCO are both, you know, sort of little baby siblings in comparison. But again, you know, you've still got the learnings, you've still got the confidence streams and the opportunities to speak to the industry, to suppliers, to find out what's going on. just to try and get a little bit of an insight into what's coming next. Stephen McDonnell: So it's not just in the UK. You're c you're g they're having events all over Europe. Duncan Swan: We go all over Europe, British Apco is only in the UK as you'd expect. There is one conference which does definitely go around further afield. That's the Critical Commons World which the TCCA organise. I've already missed one of those, that was one in Kuala Lumpur, but the rest of them, it's been interesting journey. Back to the first one actually in Berlin. Stephen McDonnell: wow. Duncan Swan: lot of major European cities, Singapore. So there's been some great, great opportunities. In fact, I probably shouldn't drop this in now, but I'm off to Melbourne at the end of this week for Comms Emily McNulty: cool. Duncan Swan: Connect, the big conference that they have down in Australia. Stephen McDonnell: That's amazing. Duncan Swan: Again, I always love that one. I work with Arsia on their panel of judges for their awards they do every year. I call it a panel session I'm doing on one of the days. But again, it's great to get out and learn because... What they do down in Australia and New Zealand, they've got different challenges. So Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: you can find out what they're up to and they do an awful lot. think about the size of Australia, America's the same in many places. You just can't get comms easily. So the Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: way that they have to provide comms to the rural fire services, rural Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: police forces, it's intriguing, it's interesting and some of the stuff they're doing is really groundbreaking. So to see that and bring it back and bring the ideas and thoughts back, I... useful. Stephen McDonnell: When you go to a place like Melbourne, will you try to tie in some personal vocation into it? 'Cause it's so long trip. great. Yeah. Duncan Swan: So got an old school friend down there. Yeah, I've got an old school friend down there. So we're going to catch up. We're taking in a concert on a Sunday. I've Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: got my good lady Suzanne coming down with me as well. So we've got James and Razorlight on the Sunday. James is the main event, but Razorlight is the one I want to see. So we're going to a Sunday. Yeah, just have a look around, have a wander, see what's what, and go down the beach, Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: look around the city. I've been before. It's a beautiful city, Melbourne. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: You've got to. You can't just drop in and out for a conference. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah, that's a that's a truth. Emily McNulty: Right. No. Yeah, that is a trip. Yeah, very cool. Well, thank you for sharing that, Duncan. It sounds like you've been a real world traveler, which is wonderful to hear. Duncan Swan: You Emily McNulty: your perspective on kind of those those those different places. But I'm gonna take us a little bit now into your career journey and background and kind of how you got to to where you are. And so I called Duncan Swan: Yeah. Emily McNulty: it out in your intro, but you studied electronics engineering at Sheffield in Duncan Swan: Yep. Emily McNulty: the early eighties. So what originally drew you to that area of study? Duncan Swan: That's a really weird question. I loved it when I saw it as something you wanted to try and look into. I fell into it in a way. I did Maths, Physics, Chemistry as my A-level subject, so the two years before going to university. I was okay, I wasn't necessarily the best. I got reasonable grades, got enough grades to get into university. Engineering seemed to be the thing to do, it was good to do. It was a hard course, but the more I got into it, the more I liked it. I really loved semiconductors and all the stuff around that. I didn't realize how much I actually really liked things like antennas and propagation. My final year I did a project all around antennas and comms. that really started to push me towards doing what my career has been since then, the comm side of things. A lot of work around antennas, lot of work around radio propagation. I look back and I go, I was lucky. I made a very good choice for me. It was a subject that I really grew into and a subject that by the end of it, I absolutely loved. So there was no great sort of white sort of spark or whatever. You've got to do engineering. Emily McNulty: Light bulb moment. Duncan Swan: I fell into it. I probably could say that a little bit around my career all the way through. It's right place, right time, just made a decision. and that particular decision took me down a path that I've never looked back from. Emily McNulty: Yeah, and it sounds like too, obviously, your experience at Sheffield, maybe your professors and the different projects you got exposure to helped helped progress that. Duncan Swan: Absolutely, yeah absolutely and you do learn so much. I university I always say it's twofold. One you've got your course you do, you do educational stuff you and you expand your mind from an educational perspective. I also think you expand your mind as a person. know those three years I was young when I went to university. I went to university at 17 just about until I turned 18. Friends I made, the level of maturity that actually grows within you as you have to go through that. The stupidity as well at certain times, we don't talk about that very often, Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: but you learn through it. It's all part of life's rich chapelstery, I think as they say. So yeah, I've Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: got really fond memories of all the things that I did as part of being at university, being a student. It started to make me. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: Do you do you still have any interest in the semiconductor industry? No. You're not paying attention to it at all. It's pretty big now with AI. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: It's passed me by. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: Look, when I first started at Philips in 1984, it was a graduate scheme that we were on. We went through various different parts. We went into the Aerocon systems test and you were in there with proper resistors and you had to choose the right one to go into. You'd actually take chips and you put chips onto boards and you just don't do that anymore. mean, you know, what goes onto a semiconductor chip now is unbelievable. That's my mind, you know. All the stuff that used to be on a big circuit board is now a tiny chip and it can all be programmed whatever from a computer or PC or whatever you need to do. It's nothing like the old days. But then, you know, it was what it was and I am where am. I can't complain. no, semiconductors these days, it just takes a lot for me to really work through the number of transistors and resistors or built into those little tiny sort of wafers of silicon. Emily McNulty: Yeah. And Duncan, the reason Steve asked that is because semiconductors are a huge thing here where we're based in Rochester, New York. Duncan Swan: Right. Okay. Emily McNulty: so yes. Right, right. Stephen McDonnell: Like Micron just opened up a the plant. A and because we're kinda in the AI world it's all just together. Yeah. Emily McNulty: It's all. Duncan Swan: You just think of computing and supercomputing and the stuff that can happen now. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: is generations and generations moved on in the past 40 years. It's an unbelievable change. It really is. Emily McNulty: Yeah. So so Duncan too, you you called out how you kind of fell into kind of your love of comms and that sort of thing. And that's how kind of your c career progressed. But you ended up working at Phillips after graduating. and that's when you ended up starting to work in public safety products, right? Like radio solutions. I read two the 123 London underground stations that you helped do their radio solutions for. So that I guess the way that that happened with public safety, was that a conscious effort or was it more just that love of comms and ended up that way? Duncan Swan: So, yeah, build it through. I've actually been writing a couple of articles, which I've really enjoyed doing, looking back at things that have happened in the tech world, especially around control rooms. My first ever project after I moved into, I was in the Systems Installation department, that was the job, my role that I had. The first project was Cumbria Ambulance. So it was an ambulance service in the northwest of England. I was driving around from radio site to radio site, changing some small modules, what they call cell-core modules, just to give them an extra little bit of functionality. That's my first taste of public safety. I did various different projects after that big project, actually down here in Hampshire. Little did I know that 20 odd years later I'll be living down in Hampshire, a big project for Hampshire Police, which was a year and a half of my life where I... did the designs as a graduate engineer I was allowed to do the designs I was looking at my shoulders to make sure it all worked with some really novel stuff we did in there then it all got built took it down I was part of the installation team part of the commissioning team so I saw that really pretty much all the way from cradle to grave and again you learn you learn so much doing doing something like that and that will all stick with me and has a big big public safety project and a couple of Cutting Edge Philips products that we used then, something called the PFX, which going back to the chip side of things, it was one of the first radios that had a little chip machine, they chip surface mount components in there and that was a big thing at the time back in 1987, 88, 89. The 123 Underground stations, that was a fascinating project where A lot of comms stuff happens out of necessity, out of tragedy. was a big fire in London at the King's Cross underground station. were lots of wooden escalators back in the day. think something simple has dropped a cigarette. The whole thing went up in flames. One of recommendations was they needed proper comms throughout all the underground stations that were underground for police, for fire in particular, the London Underground staff. we, Philips won the contract to do the designs. We started off I think it was with six stations. was six stations they wanted us to deal start with. We did all the drawings or the prep work. They had no cab drawings. We did all the cab drawings of the round stations for them, which was a big thing at the time. The designs, lots of leaky feeder or radiating cable. It was probably radiating cable at the time. Going around the stations, taking a signal from a particular point, whether it's a base station or if London Fire Brigade turned up, they put their fire engine outside, they plugged into the wall and their comms would then sort of propagate all the way through the station to where it needed to be. Some of those stations are big. You've got the used areas, the platforms, the passenger areas, the non-passenger areas. They all needed comms. Each station was designed separately. You'd do a survey, lots of photographs, videos, come back, you'd do the design. Then you'd give the design back to the underground and they'd get somebody to go in and install the cable, all splitters, couplers, all the things needed to distribute it around the station. That went from about six stations to start with to all these 123 that all needed comes and that was another year and a half two years doing that we did some novel stuff we did some fantastic work and we had some great companies we worked with it was Aerial Facilities who did all the main combining to make sure that everything was tuned properly and you really it sort of went into the radiating system in a good state. Yeah, was fascinating. I could talk about for ages. other one that Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: I had on there is one of the things I also love. was a Docklands Light Railway was a new railway coming in in London. They wanted comms. And it's one of the first times we've actually used fiber optic to distribute an Emily McNulty: Okay. Duncan Swan: RF. So we can actually modulate the fiber or the... the laser, you could modulate that at one end and it would go down probably seamless in terms of loss of signal, recapture it at the other end and then rebroadcast it. It's something that's used all over the place now but you give it back and you think, yeah, that was something awful, something different and at end of the day it wasn't necessarily cheap to do but it probably saved an absolute fortune in so many ways and it worked. Emily McNulty: Right. That's cool. Yeah. Duncan Swan: It worked. See ya! Stephen McDonnell: Hundred and twenty three. That's quite quite a bit. So the any basically underground station in London, if I've been down there, was probably done by you. Duncan Swan: They were back in the day, they've all been upgraded since. That Stephen McDonnell: They've all been upgraded. Duncan Swan: was back in 89, 90. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: That's all changed now. You've got the underground stations now are all getting the MNOs and mobile network operators are all put in there. again there's big problems in terms of space to their radio equipment, their combining equipment together so the projects that have followed since then that I haven't been involved with but I have taken a bit of an interest in for obvious reasons you they've all had space constraints, power constraints, Victorian architecture to deal with yeah Emily McNulty: Mm. Duncan Swan: it's fascinating Emily McNulty: That is fascinating. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing about that experience, Duncan. It it does sound like you still have a vested interest in it, which is really cool. Duncan Swan: Yeah. Emily McNulty: but so after working though at Phillips, you did kind of move more into the consultancy space. So I guess what what drew you to that side of the industry? Duncan Swan: So yeah, so I moved, went, I did a little bit of other work with another part of Philips doing microwave radio for a while, which again was also fascinating. Lots of stuff with offshore, lots of first stuff we did with some police forces in the UK. But that was going through change. Philips was going through change. He was going to move on to, I believe it was Lucent and to AT &T. And I just happened to come across an advert in the institution that I'm part of. That looks like a really good opportunity. A called Mason Communications based up in Manchester. Manchester's getting a lot of headlines these days with our Prime Minister Andy Burnham from Manchester. I've always got to mention that these days. I did the interviews, they offered me the job and I started as a consultant in Mason Communications and worked all the way through from consultant up to being one of the directors. they became part of AnalysisMation, one of the partners there. you know, back in 2013, 2014, we decided to take part in the business back out of the Alsace Mason and Ford Mason advisory. So was one of the co-founders of that particular business. So that's sort of the goal through. was no specific, I've got to go and do a consultancy. It was interesting, it was intriguing. I liked the sort of projects they were working on. I'd come across the company a couple of times before doing work with Scratch Hand, which I think it was. So I knew a bit about them, I knew that they were trusters and it just seemed interesting and a chance to do something different. So I it. Emily McNulty: Yeah, the opportunity presented itself. So you pursued it. Very cool. Duncan Swan: Perfect. Emily McNulty: okay. And I do want to hit on something in particular with Mason Advisory. So what I read online is that when you worked there, you led technical assurance for the UK Home Office's a billion pound emergency services mobile communications program. What was that? Can you explain more about it? Duncan Swan: So what is that? So the Emergency Services Network, which is what's being rolled out, is basically the UK's government first net. So we've had a network called Airwave, which is a Tetra-based network which covers the whole of the UK, police, fire, ambulance, coastguard, all the first responders. They all moved off their individual UHF, VHF networks onto Airwave. Started back in the early 2000s with police, ambulance then joined, then fire, and the rest of the first responder community came on. So that's something that's been running for, well, I'd it started in 2000, so it's 26 years. There's a project or initiative started probably back in 2013, 14, might be a bit earlier, but that's the sort of time when the UK Home Office decided it wants to start looking towards a new network, basically using 4G, or 5G as we are now. and 2015 they awarded contracts to EE to provide the mobile to provide the actual network so using EE's radio access network with a separate dedicated core for the network. And Motor Rail Solutions won another part of the thing so that started back in 2015 when that contract was given out. So we were, I had a team, initially three again, small team, three or four people we built it to about 30, 35. That's advisory, still doing a lot of work with the Home Office. Still seen as absolutely trusted technical advisors. And we, you know, the team was built up to really help out providing help with specifications, guidance as to what you do testing. I'm really working with the Civil Servants and other partners that the Home Office brought in for the project. So it's probably a multi-million pound project at Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: the end of the day. It's gone through some interesting chapters because it was supposed to be delivered by 2019, 2020. Those timescales were never realistic, if the truth be known. It's gone through a bit of a reset and they're now aiming at probably getting it in around about 29, 20, 30. So it's an extra decade built onto top of that. It is Emily McNulty: Okay. Interesting. Duncan Swan: complex, it is difficult. The way the UK are doing it is probably slightly different to the way Thursnap have done it for sure. It's different to way that the French are doing it, the Spanish are doing it, the Finnish are doing it. Everybody seems to be doing their MCX projects in a slightly different way. The way they're engaging mobile operators is different. In the UK we only have the one. In France they've got multiple operators. In the US AT &T have got Spectrum and they're it. So there's lots of different ways that different jurisdictions are running it. But in the UK Yeah Mason advisory provided technical assurance over that period time. There were times when you would scratch your head and it would hurt a little bit, at times when you'd bang it against the wall. But actually there some great stuff, you could actually really see some progress happening. It's a shame that things had to be reset and restarted. But have been and it is from looking at it from a far now, not too far but looking at it from outside, they are starting to get to a point where we will get back to start seeing real delivery happening. Emily McNulty: Right. I saw the one billion pound and I was like, that's substantial. Let's let's chat about that. Stephen McDonnell: D did you Duncan Swan: Our part of it was a small part of it, all the bits Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: together, you can never underestimate how important some of the smaller bits are in making sure that you've got Emily McNulty: Right. Duncan Swan: the right machine. Stephen McDonnell: When you were at Matison Consulting, were you working with all the different public safety vendors as well? Duncan Swan: So yeah, we were agnostic in terms of vendors. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: We would put together, we would go out and capture user requirements. We'd put them into a specification, which in the early days was very technical, in the later days was very much requirements led. So it's interesting watching over, I was there for 26 years, you watch the change from having something which was very, it's gotta be blue, it's gotta be 10 dBs gain, it's gotta be all the technical stuff that you put into a spec. So we wanted to do this. just tell us how you're do it. So that's a really, really big change across the industry. we take it through, we get the user requirements, we put the specifications together, Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: get it out to industry, and then we'd look at who came back with the various solutions and choose what was the most cost effective for the client, which isn't always the cheapest. You gotta look at the whole of life, so what have you. Stephen McDonnell: Did you did you ever work did you did you ever work with any companies that do voice recording with Nice or Varent? Duncan Swan: Yeah, NICE were part of many of the projects that we did. They weren't the only ones in the chemical red box who also had recording Stephen McDonnell: yeah. Duncan Swan: solutions. There's a few over the years who did that. And of course, back in the day, you're talking about audio recording and tapes and Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: swapping things out and keeping big stories. And now it's data recording. It's audio, it's audience, it's everything together. Stephen McDonnell: Exactly. Duncan Swan: Again, another huge change in terms of where the industry's gone. Stephen McDonnell: So we were one of Redbox's first partners in North America. Duncan Swan: Okay. Stephen McDonnell: So so no Redbox well. And then a company that we'd like to call like our sister company is called Business Systems. I don't know if you've Duncan Swan: Mm-hmm. Stephen McDonnell: Business Systems, but they were a reseller of Redbox and Nice. In the UK they still are. They're still over there. Duncan Swan: Okay. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: They got bought by PE firm, but It's actually been a good recruiting company for us. So we we have a decent amount of British employees because of these companies. Duncan Swan: Okay. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: and I've spent a decent amount of time in London. not lately, but before COVID for like four or five years I would be over there once a quarter. So great times. Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And and so Duncan, I'll I'll move us on to your next journey, which has been at British APGO. And that Duncan Swan: Mm-hmm. Emily McNulty: started in twenty twenty two. So what brought you to that role? Duncan Swan: So the journey of a British Apco really started back in about 96, 97. I still Emily McNulty: Really? Okay. Well that's Duncan Swan: remember going to my first commercial advisory group meeting. I was invited down as somebody who was enthusiastic about the industry. And of course I was a lot younger back then. And... became a member of the Commercial Advisory Group for British App Co and then took over the chair for four years. So I chaired that particular group for that period of time. It's a bit of a so what there. So for me, the so what was I got involved with the executive. I helped shape and plan the annual events that were going on. The regional events at that time was very much a regional focus as well, which we've just gone these days. There was a big regional focus and I really just got involved and really loved what British Apco was doing. For me as a consultant it was an opportunity to network, so you met the users, you saw industry, you could find out a lot more about what was going on. it was nice to do something voluntarily but it was also nice to be networking and to be in the know and be known. So it started back then. Back in 2017 I was a All In Life membership and a lot of that comes from a conversation I had a few years earlier with the President as was, where the annual event was going on, it wasn't particularly well supported, we were sat at the annual dinner and there was just lots of spaces. We started a conversation with Keith and said look, you've got to keep British Apco relevant. If it's not relevant... you just aren't going to get the support and you'll wither and die and that would be a real shame so let's work out how we can make British App Co-relevance and the conversations continued and the association started to grow again we started to our feet back on the ground again I always thought that there were two possible roles I wanted to do when I took retirement or went into retirement One of them was the role I'm doing at the moment in British APCO, which I never thought would be vacant at the time it was. And there was another similar job, a bit more overseas than this particular one. It was a sad state of affairs, or sad turn of affairs, when our previous chief exec, Ian Thompson, great guy, I'd known Ian for years from being in North Yorkshire Police, whose role within the Police Information Technology Organisation. closely with. So he was the Chief Executive at British Atco and during Covid it was November 2020 when we sadly lost Ian to a heart condition and one minute he was working in his office, the next minute he was no longer with us. I had a conversation with the President at the time, John Anthony, just said John, that's a role I'd love to be able to do if only it was a couple of years later. I'm just a look, you know, we are in no no rush to fill the position. You want to make sure you got the right person. Not necessarily saying that was necessarily going be me, but they wanted to go out and do recruitment in the right way. It was still Covid years. There was not an awful lot going on at the time. So they did wait and I got the job. So started in. March 2022. I also said I was going to take retirement at 58. Go back to those early days of Phillips. Two weeks in I got my pension statement. If you join the pension scheme, when you Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: get to 58, which is your retirement age if you stay with us, this is what your benefits will be, and da, da, da, da. So 58 always stuck with me, and I got the 58 and a half. was time to actually say, you were right back in 1984, I'm going to retire in 5058. Stephen McDonnell: It good for you. What if I could ask what what were the responsibilities when you were on the commercial advisory when you first started? Duncan Swan: So yeah, I mean, we don't have a commercial advisory group anymore. That sort of went by the wayside back in about 2010, 2011. But the responsibilities really were, we were a group of all the commercial organizations associated with British Apco. There were firms big and small. And we got together probably every couple of months and we shared what was going on with the association. We shared what was happening at regional events. We... tried to get interest for people to host regional events, to tag tours around, to maybe even suggest users they've been working with, industry been working with, we could make good case studies. A lot of work towards the annual events, and we were also very successful at actually getting our corporate members to provide money to the president's charity. The president of Oprysabke used to their own charity every year. at the annual dinner there'll be a charity collection and there were small local charities you know who did an awful lot of good but really found it difficult to raise money to do the stuff they wanted to do using children's hospices or you know cancer charities the like all doing fantastic work all finding it difficult to get the know get the pennies in and we you know the president would pick some something close to themselves and the commercial advisory group sort of sort of muscling behind to try and empty the pockets of our commercial members just to support the charity and it worked really, really well. So it was a conduit between the executive committee with industry to make sure that everybody was properly engaged with the membership as a whole. We always Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: say at the moment that one of the things that we pride ourselves on as British Apco is that we're a safe space between industry and users. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: It's an opportunity where the two different bodies can come together and talk and discuss and openly do things. It's very difficult for industry to get time with users during the normal working week, getting those meetings, getting aware. Everything's under scrutiny. There's commercial procurement rules and all that sort of thing. It becomes very difficult to get that time. And events like the one that we do, and there's other events as well, which fall into the same category. But the events we do, we see as being a safe space for those conversations. me have. Emily McNulty: Yeah, definitely. And so I guess Duncan, can you explain too for our listeners, 'cause we've had quite a few people on from APCO International and their representatives, like how do British APCO and APO International differ and then how do they work together? Duncan Swan: So back in the day when British Apco was founded, back in 1993, I know that was our 30 year anniversary in 2023, so I can always work the math. We were a chapter, we were an international chapter of Apco. That changed probably a good 10 years ago. There's a lot of restructuring happened around Apco International. We kept the name, we were very much a... sort of a similar organisation but there isn't that sort of formal type, we do have an MOU with Banatco Canada and Banatco International but we work. We work closely and there's an awful lot of respect between both boards. I have conversations with Mel Meyer on a reasonably regular basis and John Provenzar I know at NINA as well and Brian Fonski before John. So there's this sort of, I would say it's very much a professional understanding, professional sort of relationship where. If we need to share something, we will. We're all part of what's known as CSIPs, the Collaboration for International Public Safety. actually the collaborative coalition for international public safety is what CSIP stands for as a whole. And we got membership of that which includes organisations beyond just North America and ourselves and we meet regularly every month we'll meet so again we do see each other on that regular basis and know Jack Van Arde has been a great supporter you know this year again Mike O'Connor you know again he now sits in on the CSIP meetings and we have we do have some very good conversations and there's been some real wins that having that international collaboration has brought. I go back I think it's probably three years now probably 2023 when we had the huge big problem, well it had been 24 actually, a huge big problem with Samsung and sort of their app when they brought out an update for the Indian market which suddenly had a huge impact across the globe on false calls. know, PSAPs at the world over were suddenly getting a 15-20 % increase in emergency calls that were false calls and pocket dials and the like. and it was because of the Android operating system being updated without anybody really thinking through what the impact of doing something for all the right reasons for the Indian market would have globally. And it was actually Ina who... found through, I think it was the Netherlands, they finally worked out what was going on, that it was this Android update, but were able to tell people globally, this is where the problem is. Now, clearly that's not the end of it, because until the problem's fixed, you've still got all these calls going into PSAPs the world over. And through the might of having all the different organisations there, we actually persuaded Google that this was a real problem, and it really needed to do something quite quickly, because the pressure it was putting on PSAPs. you know, getting the world over was huge. You if you get a false call, lot of jurisdictions say you have to ring back to make sure everything's okay. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Emily McNulty: Right. Duncan Swan: So if you've got an extra 15, 20 % calls coming in, A, you're answering, getting nothing, then you've got to ring back. The load on your PSAPs, the load on the people in there is huge. And I look back at that as Stephen McDonnell: Mm-hmm. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: one of the things that SIPs really did help to promulgate what was going on. to make sure a solution was found sooner rather than potentially if Google wanted to make it happen. Emily McNulty: Yeah, I was about to say I I assumed too with the different chapters involved and like you said to the different organizations like British APGO, there has to be a a cool I mean, we've already experienced it, but a very solid community of public safety professionals. So it's cool and Duncan Swan: Thank Emily McNulty: an an issue of that scale that you were just explaining, like for the groups to come together and be like, All right, collective front, let's figure this out. so so that's a a powerful, powerful message for sure that APGO as a group has has created and the public safety field Duncan Swan: Go. Emily McNulty: has created. And Duncan, you started, I think, to go into this, but some of the the technological advances that are happening happening in the public safety space. Duncan Swan: Uh-huh. Emily McNulty: Steve and I are very familiar with this conversation and the question that we often ask our public safety leaders we have on the podcast, but it's around AI and how AI is showing up in public safety. And I think you can offer a unique global perspective from that as to Duncan Swan: Yes. Emily McNulty: how you guys are thinking about it at British ABGO. Duncan Swan: So I always push back on that question again. We've had AI for decades. You look back, Emily McNulty: Okay, yeah. Duncan Swan: you go back 10, 15, 20 years and we've had ambulances that have been stationed around, not on the ambulance station itself, but out and about in the community based on predictive analysis. all AI, it's all about the data set, it's all about how you use those data sets. You've got fire and rescue services who they get a call comes in, you know, and you work out the best route, which is the closest station. That's all AI. It's very simple AI now when you look back on it, but it was all the time, was using data sets to actually make the right decision. So we've had AI for a long while. It is significantly more powerful significantly different or changing really in terms of what's what. I never like to actually call out companies but I will call out Apt on 9-1-1 because they had the foresight, both NINA and APCO International as I've heard, the same set of was at NINA, to actually put together their demonstrator of the future and it really is the near future knowing what the various different parts... carbine product dispatch, what they're doing in terms of putting it together. And it's great to actually see that the control room of the future is really about integrating the entire emergency event. The control room of the past was about integrating tech. It was bringing telephony in, it was bringing your radio channels in, your VHF, the UHF radio channels, it was bringing sort of your PSDN traffic, was bringing your tie lines to your prisons maybe, or... bringing alarms in. It was integrating technology. Now we're integrating the event. We're pulling in that first call, we're pulling in the video, we're pulling in anything else that's now that all the other information is going to help us to first of all understand the incident. Understand how we're going to respond to the incident. Make sure that as the first responders are on their way, they've got all the information they need. So keeping it all updated when they get there. You being able to make all the right decisions, being able to maybe bring in a senior doctor at a hospital to give advice and guidance because they can see, can understand what's what. You can probably give in the right conditions, the paramedics can potentially give better, ensure a better outcome through the information that they can share back. with the physicians and what have you in other places. So much now that you're pulling all that information together you can actually hopefully get better outcomes and it was great to actually see what Axon have done in terms of how it goes through and how AI was used behind that so you've got the language side of things you know if you've got somebody who doesn't speak very good English they're very good at Spanish you can have that translation. there again you're not going through an interpreter. which we still see as being a big thing to be able to get an interpreter on and to have that language line and be able to use that. To know that you can really trust AI to do that is fantastic. Then there's all the other bits and pieces around what AI can do. bringing in the information as the breadcrumbs of where people are in terms of moving around. If you've got shots, gunshots detected, it's being able to pinpoint where things came from. All of that needs very, very powerful computing and it can pull it all together. And it's not about necessarily making the decisions, it's ensuring that you can make better informed decisions. It's helping the human who at the end of the day is managing that particular incident to be able to do all the right things and for sure we'll get better outcomes there's no doubt about it you know and I know the resolve the worry about you know are we are we giving too much to AI without allowing AI to do too much and I think in the industry ridden public safety it is very very risk averse very, very risky for us, know that. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: But we can give it a go, we can try it in scenarios which aren't life threatening, which are non-critical to actually build up our trust, to build up how we're gonna use it, to make sure we understand what the data sets look like to inform the AI that we're gonna use, because at the end of the day, AI is only as good as the data it's using. And understanding how we actually ring-fence our systems. We aren't putting a police manual onto an Intel Copilot or something to use and have external links to them. Just don't do that. You've got to make sure you've got your own network there. But it is becoming very powerful in terms of what it can do. Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: I think we're seeing in everyday life. I I used to be a big, I just write something myself, you know, get on with it, you know, and you suddenly realize actually you could be a lot better informed, a lot smarter in terms of Emily McNulty: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: structure, by trusting AI and, then not trusting it a hundred percent in terms of you just, there you go, you've done it, but using that to inform, using that to, to allow you to, to, to make better use of your time. And I think it Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: all feeds across into the public safety space as well. You know, you're, you're using it where it's best. best enabled and we will start seeing a lot more use of AI outside of just non-emergency side of things. What I've seen in North America, certainly in the US, there are not everywhere, but there are pockets of getting bigger pockets of use of AI, which is really great. Emily McNulty: Yes. Yes. Duncan Swan: It's quite mind blowing in some cases. Still not crossing over into necessarily fully into the emergency response, but certainly informing it. We're a little bit behind, but we're certainly seeing in the non-emergency response here in the UK, whether it's the police 101 or the health service 101 or triple one. We're seeing it being used an awful lot more and it's having positive results, really is having positive results and you know the day will come when we start to see that moving across more into the critical, critical con side of things, critical response side of things. So yeah as an industry definitely risk-averse but at the same time it's understanding or managing that particular risk and using AI to its best advantage and there's loads that can be done with it, loads that just make decisions easier to make. make getting information quicker and easier. There is the caveat on that, that certainly when you're a first responder and you're out there, you need the comms technology to be able to support that. And that goes back to our conversation about UK, Home Office, Emergency Service Network, FirstNet, they're all the mobile networks that are going to be needed to pull that information down, pull it down safely, pull it down within a secure environment. Because again, you're not talking a lot of this stuff doesn't just want to be out there in the open, it needs to be secure. Stephen McDonnell: Yeah. Duncan Swan: So, it's exciting Emily McNulty: Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: Great. Duncan Swan: and moving so Emily McNulty: that's great. Duncan Swan: quickly. Emily McNulty: Very quickly. And like you said, the use cases just continue to evolve too. So it's exciting to Duncan Swan: Yeah, absolutely. Emily McNulty: see that. And I know Steve has asked this question many times. So with conversational AI and the nonemergency side of things, that seems to be where it is now. but there's so many other use cases in the center where something more manual can be optimized, time can be better spent elsewhere, that sort of thing. So Duncan Swan: The training side of things is mind blowing. The fact that supervisors can only listen to maybe 5 % of conversations and to feedback, AI is a small. Stephen McDonnell: All of them, yep. Absolutely. Duncan Swan: You know, and it can pick out, you're training the model to do certain things in a way that is positive. It's feedback, it's constructive feedback. It's, you know, it's not there to criticize. It's there to help people learn, you know, and if you pick up everyone, you can start to get trends. And the beauty of the models are that you've got a whole raft of data. You can really get through that and pick the trends out quite quickly. much more difficult to do that, know, somebody just pouring through transcripts and notes and everything else. So that side of things is, it's fascinating, but also it should help, it should really help make the job in those emergency centres a little easier. Emily McNulty: Yeah, Duncan too. And Steve, I guess if you have any other questions on AI for Duncan, I did want to go briefly because I know Charlie, our our gentleman who works at Wilmac, who's now based in in Derby, he he's a big advocate for workforce management. And especially in the context in our space and now at Wilmac, we're we're making more of a conscious effort to bring workforce management to PSAPs in in North America, because it's still heavily manual. And I think that there's a huge opportunity for for an AI use case there too. but I know in the UK workforce management isn't like unheard of in PSAPs in three one one, nine one one. I guess can you share, I guess, a little bit about that? Duncan Swan: It's not an area that I'm overly familiar with Emily McNulty: Yeah. Duncan Swan: but we are seeing, mean, know, our non-emergency number 101, you know, we are seeing certain police forces starting to adopt better ways of dealing with non-emergencies. I think at of day people just want to be able to get an answer. They've got a problem. They want to know that the problem has been logged and some things have been done about it or they might have a question and they get the answer. The beauty of today's... conversational AI but also AI that can go through a lot of information and give you answers is that sometimes it's more accurate than talking to a human. If you've got a specific question with a specific answer, it's absolutely fine. think sometimes people are happy just to get the answer or just to know that a particular issue has been logged. It's a different thing when it's life and death, when you need the reassurance from a human that yes, Emily McNulty: For sure. Duncan Swan: somebody's on the way to something which is, you you're having the worst day of your life. You're probably best talking to a human in those particular situations to get that reassurance. Stephen McDonnell: In in in general, that's the I think that's what we hear most. Like when you're Emily McNulty: Yes. Stephen McDonnell: calling 911, it's normally the worst day of your life. At this point, our society with AI, it's not there. The trust isn't there. They're gonna want to talk to a human. Now ten, fifteen, twenty years, the trust might be there. That it AI is actually more reliable than a human. But we'll see how that goes. Emily McNulty: Yeah, we'll definitely see. Well, Steve, do you have any other questions for Duncan before I start to wrap this up? Stephen McDonnell: No, this has been awesome, Duncan. Really appreciate it. Some great stories. you know, we've we've kind of been pigeonholed in the United States and we do a lot of work in Canada. so hearing stories across the pond about what you guys are doing is great. really appreciate the insight and thanks, thanks for joining. Duncan Swan: You're welcome and we're not that different, you know at end of the day it's it's Emily McNulty: Yeah. Yeah. Stephen McDonnell: No. Duncan Swan: you know, there are some big differences But they don't they don't actually differ in terms of our first responders Our first responders the world over are there to Emily McNulty: Mm-hmm. Duncan Swan: to go and help the fact that end of the day is It's their job. It's why they do it, you know, it's never the best paid profession in the world but you know, they they are the people who do it are they're giving service day in day out and I'm always grateful for what I see out there with our first responders. know, it's always hats off the situations they find themselves in at times. I don't think I would necessarily want to be there myself. So yeah, they do a fantastic job. The world over. Emily McNulty: Wonderful. Yeah. Well thank you, Duncan. Is there anything before I I share with our listeners where they can can find you, is there anything that you're working on at British App Go that you'd like to share about or just a a general message you'd like to share with our listeners Duncan Swan: answer? mean, joining British AppCo is free. If you're in the user community, it's free. We're always looking for new corporate members. We're about 50, 51 corporate members now. It's not particularly expensive to join if you want to join as a corporate member. I'd certainly encourage anybody out there in the user community who just wants to get our journal which comes electronically six times a year, our newsletter, see a little bit about what's going on, know, sign up, go onto the webpage, sign up and you know, if you find after two or three months that it's not doing anything for you, fine. But I guarantee there'll be stuff there that you'll really find you'll like. Emily McNulty: Yes, definitely wonderful. Well, thanks for sharing that, Duncan. For our listeners, if you're interested in in signing up for BAPCO's newsletter or learning more about BAPCO, you can visit their website at BAPCO. That's B A P C O dot org dot uk. And also for our listeners, if you'd like to connect with Duncan, you can find him on LinkedIn at Duncan Swan. Duncan, thanks for joining us on on the Will MacWire today. We really appreciate it. Stephen McDonnell: Thanks, Duncan. Appreciate it. Duncan Swan: Emily Steedon, thank you very much. Thank you. Emily McNulty: Wonderful.