The National Police Air Service used operational research modelling techniques to optimise the location of bases, response times and use of its aircraft to achieve a 14% budgetary saving.
The National Police Air Service (NPAS) was formed to provide a national airborne response capability with borderless tasking, and has the aim of delivering a cost-effective service which yields actual savings for the service.
A simulation model was built to examine the NPAS’s ability to respond to calls for support. The following requirements had to be included in any solution:
It was also important to capture the chance of a task being abandoned because of poor weather, as this was a priority consideration for the NPAS. Other inputs included base operating hours, pilots’ shift lengths, maintenance schedules, interruptions to tasks, changing priorities and refuelling.
The resulting model provided a visual representation of the service, showing a map of the bases, tasks and aircraft responding to tasks. There was also an information feed of when tasks are generated.
The model did not simply present one solution, but could achieve a range of savings between 7% and 28% by adjusting:
Following this, the NPAS’ board agreed on a 15-base, 23-craft fleet model which achieved an approximate saving of 14% of the current budget, which was in addition to the original 23% saved when creating the NPAS. The simulation also provides what-if analysis on other decisions that can be modelled, and has prompted the National Strategic Board to consider a new fleet plan and estates plan, and the National Police Chiefs Council has used it to adopt a new deployment model. There is also the possibility that the model could be used by other air support providers wishing to look at a national service.
The Chief Operating Officer for NPAS, Tyron Joyce, said, “As a direct result of this work we were able to develop the new operating model and base locations and latterly a completely new funding model. I have no hesitation in describing its use as essential during the process.”