Home / Press Releases Archive / 2017 Press Releases

FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA, March 27, 2017 — The City of Des Moines, Iowa has selected Federal Engineering, Inc. (FE) to provide professional services to develop options and recommendations for the City to replace its legacy analog mobile radio system.

Mr. Ronald F. Bosco, FE’s President and CEO, stated: “The goal of the new system is to provide notable improvements in interoperability, service footprint, GPS locating, noise cancelation, in-building coverage, efficient call loading, encryption, system security, over-the-air-programming and rekeying. To achieve these objectives at minimal expense, FE will investigate several options including the viability of joining an existing public safety system versus building and maintaining a new system solely to serve the City. User needs, functionality, performance, and cost issues will be assessed for each alternative.”

Mr. Scott Wiggins, Assistant Vice President at Federal Engineering presented an overview: “To best understand the City’s current and future needs, FE will meet with designated staff from each department including Police, Fire, Public Works, Parks, Engineering, Traffic and Transportation, and the City Manager’s Office. FE’s recommended system will support this broad spectrum of users and our goal is to incorporate their needs.

The City enjoys strong working relationships with all agencies in the area and has many cooperative service agreements with its neighbors. FE will, therefore, engage in high level discussions with the following entities who frequently interoperate with the City:

• Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority
• Des Moines Airport Authority
• Des Moines Public Schools
• Des Moines Regional Waste Reclamation Authority
• Des Moines Water Works
• Polk County Sheriff PSAP – serves many neighboring agencies
• Warren County Sheriff PSAP (include Indianola and Carlisle) – serves additional agencies
• WestCom PSAP – serves many neighboring agencies”

Captain David M. Ness, Des Moines Project Manager, described how they selected Federal Engineering: “Our Evaluation and Selection Committee employed a rigorous methodology. The following competitive criteria were used to evaluate consultant proposals:

• Capability of firm as demonstrated by experience with similar projects
  • Work history and experience with public safety LMR systems including: conventional, analog, trunked, P25 digital, 911 radio dispatch console systems, tower sites, radio network connectivity
  • Knowledge and familiarity with current or emerging systems in the Des Moines area
  • Priority accorded to this project relative to the existing workload of consultant
  • Realistic and timely schedule with an acceptable amount performed locally

• Understanding and organization of proposal response
  • Clearly comprehend objectives
  • Adequately explains how they will be achieved
• Feedback from references
• Cost

We then interviewed the highest-ranking firms and FE rose to the top as the best choice for Des Moines. FE’s broad life-cycle experience is particularly important because the City may opt to extend the firm’s agreement to include procurement support and implementation support during future phases.”

Federal Engineering is the leading, nationwide firm providing analysis, design, procurement, and implementation support for public safety and public service communications. FE provides consulting services involving LTE as well as traditional VHF, UHF, 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz and 4.9GHz mobile radio systems. FE also supports FirstNet planning for the Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network. Since 1983, FE has completed thousands of projects for 46 state governments, as well as numerous local and federal government clients.

Federal Engineering, Inc., recently added the L.R. Kimball public safety communications consulting practice to the firm. FE now offers the services of a worldwide leader in public safety answering point (PSAP) consulting. With FE/Kimball, jurisdictions can rely upon one firm for virtually all of their consulting needs in E9-1-1, NG9-1-1, PSAPs, Emergency Call Centers, and Emergency Operations Centers as well as land mobile radio voice, wireless data, broadband, backhaul, and emerging LTE mobile communications systems.