Emergency One are proud to say that this is the first British-designed and British-built appliance of its type, and is as a direct result of consultation and feedback from E1’s customers who, in the ever-changing world of the Fire and Rescue Services, voiced their desire for an appliance that could be used to reduce risk to crew members and the public in a number of known, and increasing, operational scenarios.
E1 employ operational experts and they used a number of additional information sources other than customer feedback, including National Generic Risk Assessments (GRA), Home Office incident types, reported safety events, and National Operational Guidance to study what type of appliance would best support safe systems of work. This allowed the team to form a hazard matrix and to identify risk reduction and mitigation measures. Throughout the design phase the team were driven by the statement: If it doesn’t reduce risk, why is it on the appliance?
So the E1 SCORPION was born.
The design team started with a blank sheet of paper and were told to ‘think differently’ – which is why there are so many innovative features on the appliance. They were also told to think about interoperability – which is how the pump specification, up to 6,000 litres/min was chosen to work with National Resilience assets such as the high-volume-pump fleet. Extinguishing systems are designed to be interchangeable in that, whilst the demonstration vehicle carried a fully integrated Cold Cut Cobra system, this could easily be changed, for example, for the new in-house-designed eMist UHP system.
The addition of the British-designed and built High Reach Extendible Turret (HRET) boom not only allows for water and foam agents to be delivered with a throw of up to 90m, but also makes it possible to deliver media through 2 x 65mm instantaneous outlets at its head – making it a temporary or emergency dry riser of up to 20m in height. Other features include video and thermal imaging, and E1 are working on a range of other features to be announced shortly, including PPV mounting and automatic overhead-obstruction safety-warning systems.
At an early stage the team decided to make the appliance resilient in terms of crewing so that it could be used as a stand-alone asset. The crew cab is fitted with the latest Bostrom seating for safety and comfort, and anti-bandit glazing is a standard fitment. This means that in effect the E1 SCORPION is a fully specified pumping appliance with the capability for rapid intervention or protracted incident types.
The E1 SCORPION has ‘pump and roll’ capabilities, making it suitable for a number of environments including industrial, petrochemical and airports.
As E1 are not wedded to any particular chassis manufacturer, E1 SCORPION has the benefit that it can be built on any suitable 18-tonne chassis from Scania, Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, MAN, Iveco and so on, and can be fitted with a choice of 16 or 20m boom packages. Bodywork design has ensured that the vehicle is fully BSEN 1846 compliant – providing users with the assurance that the appliance is as safe as it is effective. As the bodywork is E1 designed, it can be easily modified to fully customise stowage options according to customer requirements.
Other features include well-established E1 systems such as e1Fleet telematics and eCabControl (in-cab safety controller). However, improvements to the class-leading ePumpcontrol system, such as the addition of the EVO widescreen, and the e1Tag RFID inventory monitoring system, take usability and traceability to a new level.
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