The customer

The Bullring area of Birmingham has been at the forefront of the city's commercial life since 1166, when the then village was first granted a charter to hold its own market. The area developed over the centuries and by the 1960s had become the site of one of the largest and most advanced shopping centres outside the USA.

However, as the world of retail developed, the once cutting edge centre had become outmoded and needed to be replaced. Demolition of the old centre began in 2000 and the brand new, state-of-the-art Bullring opened in June 2004. The new 110,000 square metre centre features 140 shops, cafes and restaurants, parking for 3,000 cars and some stunning architecture.

The challenge

All of this is impressive, but it also needs to be managed effectively. The Bullring management company organises a range of services either directly or via third party suppliers. On a day-to-day basis, providing an efficient service to the centre's tenants is crucial - and this comprises all elements of the operation, including car parking, cleaning, security, maintenance and logistics. Clearly, an important part of managing these operations is the communications with them and between them. CarTel Communications, who are based in Birmingham, were appointed as the preferred radio communications provider to the Bullring in 2003 and quickly undertook the project to design and install a radio system which would enable the Bullring to open on time and with full communications.

The solution

As Colin Bradford, Technical Services Manager at Bullring commented, "One of the many difficulties we were faced with at the design stage was the ergonomics of the building, which is of steel frame construction and built in to a hill, with several floors below street level. This made the task of providing communications between the underground control room and security officers on the shop floor extremely hard to achieve."

Furthermore, radios were also required for the large in-house cleaning team and also the maintenance staff who all needed to communicate independently without affecting the security operations. CarTel were instrumental in finding a solution that would allow for all of this to take place at the same time, without any cross-over between the separate user groups.

CarTel's initial task was to provide a radio system for the fi rst phase of the development, whilst also bearing in mind that the system would eventually need to be able to cope with the communications for the second phase, which was to be opened a year later. In order to meet with the customer's requirements for a simple, costeffective solution, CarTel proposed a specially designed two-site trunking system. The system, known as Duo, comprises two Tait TN1100 trunking systems connected together using an innovative radio linking technology developed by CarTel.

Once installed, the Duo link ensured that users operating in the area covered by the second site could maintain communication with those on the main site. This set-up enabled all the staff on the radio system, including logistics, contract cleaners, security staff and maintenance, to talk to colleagues irrespective of where in the overall complex they happened to be working. Calls could be made to staff on either one of the sites or to all staff throughout the centre.

The benefits of the Duo system primarily centre around its cost. Rather than purchase a more complex multi-site trunking system, Duo enables the straightforward and cost-effective addition of a second site. Duo does not require a dedicated landline to link the two sites, which can be a costly item, but it does allow effi cient use of radio channels, something which a cell extender would not permit. Bullring management are very pleased with the system.

As Colin Bradford continued: "Needless to say, due to the complexity of such an installation in an extremely diverse building such as the Bullring, there were inevitable teething problems, but with CarTel's excellent technical knowledge of radio systems we were soon able to find innovative solutions to meet all of the requirements."

The outcome

Tait was so impressed with this further development carried out by Cartel, to its already popular cost-effective TN1100 trunking system, that it is adding Duo functionality to its product range which is distributed worldwide.