P&O is the UK’s largest passenger ferry operator, with 13 ships sailing from British ports and carrying millions of passengers between the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe every year.
Reliable communication is essential across every vessel in the fleet. Two way radios allow crew members working across large ships to remain in contact throughout each journey. Officers on the bridge can coordinate activity across different areas while maintenance teams can communicate as they work and customer service and catering teams can keep day to day operations running efficiently.
P&O’s ships were operating with legacy analogue radio systems, with a longer term plan to move its onboard communications across to digital. However, with large crews requiring radios on each ferry, replacing every handset at once would involve significant investment. P&O approached MTech for advice on introducing digital radios in stages while continuing to use its existing analogue equipment throughout the transition.
Our Solution
P&O selected two vessels for the first stage of the upgrade. These were the Pride of Hull, which serves the popular overnight crossing between Hull and Rotterdam and the European Highlander, operating between Cairnryan in Scotland and Larne in Northern Ireland.
The priority was to provide two way radios with the coverage and clear audio needed for dependable communication throughout both vessels. MTech recommended Motorola digital radios which could initially be programmed to operate in analogue mode alongside P&O’s existing handsets. This allows older radios to be replaced gradually before moving the complete system across to digital once the migration is finished.
The selected radios also provide strong audio clarity, helping crew members hear communications clearly when working in noisy areas such as busy passenger decks and below deck around engines and machinery.
Safety was another important consideration when recommending the radios. Crews working at sea can encounter challenging situations, so the additional safety features provide greater reassurance for employees working throughout the vessels.
These include a one push Panic Button that allows an alarm to be raised quickly as well as Lone Worker monitoring and Man Down functionality. Man Down uses an accelerometer to identify unusual horizontal movement and automatically trigger an alert when required.
GPS location tracking provides another layer of protection by helping teams identify where an alert has been activated. On a large passenger ferry with crew members working across numerous decks and different areas, being able to quickly locate the source of an emergency can make a significant difference when responding to an incident.
