April 4, 2025

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL) has launched a solution designed to enhance land mobile radio (LMR) and 911 communications by providing reliable, secure and manageable communications for emergency responders, public safety agencies and critical utilities. SEL developed its LMR solution in collaboration with Whitman County Emergency Management (WCEM). WCEM is located in Pullman, next door to the SEL campus. The collaboration began when SEL learned about the challenges WCEM had with its radio system reliability. The ability to use LMR to call for help is a vital safety concern for emergency responders, and the unreliability of legacy devices has challenged the sector. “At the end of the day, we needed three fundamental things for our infrastructure,” said then-WCEM Emergency Communications Manager Steve Krigbaum. “We needed reliable network security. We needed to know the health and condition of the radios out there in the world, and we needed precise timing. And SEL was able to provide that.” Whitman County is located in Eastern Washington, where temperature extremes in winter and summer frequently cause the legacy clocks WCEM relied on to fail. The first test of the solution came when SEL installed a prototype in Pullman in the summer of 2024. LMR systems can include multiple clocks for redundancy, automatically switching between clocks that provide the highest accuracy. SEL invents, designs and builds digital products and systems that protect power grids around the world. SEL, a 100 percent employee-owned company, has manufactured products in the United States since 1984 and now serves customers in 173 countries.