Scottish Ambulance Service

No small task: power management and control for van-derived ambulances

Scottish Ambulance Service use Dualpod

The Challenge

The Scottish Ambulance Service is the largest ambulance service in Europe, covering over 78,000 square kilometres  including Scotland’s 700-plus  islands such as the Shetland, Orkney and Hebrides groups. It operates from 151 locations, employs approximately 4000 people and has a fleet of 1500 vehicles, including 1000 A&E and Patient Transport ambulances.

With a large and diverse fleet covering such a geographical area, it was vital that Scottish Ambulance Service selected key industry partners they could work with to gain maximum operability and performance from their vehicles.

With an ever-tightening belt on government expenditure, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service trusts are now looking at cost effective alternatives to traditional coach-built vehicles for front-line ambulance procurement. The main alternative is to design and operate van-derived ambulances. Purchasing van-derived ambulances has cost advantages from both purchase and operational points of view, however the smaller size of these vehicles limits their operational carrying capacity.

The Solution

The Dualpod is a solution based on genisys that has been designed specifically to meet this challenge, and underpins Ring Carnation’ ongoing commitment to the emergency services sector. The compact Dualpod offers true ‘plug and play‘ connectivity between the base vehicle and pre and post-battery equipment, allowing rapid installation at the point-of-build without compromising on vehicle functionality. Designed to be mounted behind the cab seats in special casings, the Dualpod allows the majority of the pre- and post-battery equipment to be distributed between separate driver and passenger-side pods, linked by an umbilical wiring harness, with bronze-tinted polycarbonate covers to aid rapid diagnostics and fault finding. This intelligent design, together with the use of multi-pole interface connectors, makes the best use of the available space while still allowing ease of access for maintenance and limiting the amount of cabling that needs to run down each B- pillar of the vehicle.

Michael E Jackson, Fleet Manager for Scottish Ambulance commented:
“Dualpod is another example of Ring Carnation’ commitment to developing innovative solutions specifically for the emergency services sector.”

Solution Implementation

The driver’s side unit houses all the required genisys, CANbus and audio modules, together with dedicated anchor points for an issue free siren amplifier and other chassis dependent devices. The passenger-side pod contains the magnetically latching split charge contactors and communications battery isolator, as well as communications and permanent feeds. Logic and power is bussed between the pods via the umbilical link, with genisys/mission critical outputs located in the driver pod and main feeds in and out of the system terminating at the passenger pod.”

Downloads

• Case Study: Scottish Ambulance Service