Fire and EMS Planning Approaches and Alternatives
By: Lane Wintermute The old adage is: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” There is no shortage of planning tools available to Fire and EMS agencies. Choosing the right tools for your department depends on your needs, your community’s conditions, and your current and expected growth. No matter the format or terminology, any good planning tool box should include these essential elements: Master Planning Strategic Planning Standards of Cover (Deployment Planning) Cooperative Efforts…
Fire Department Cooperative Efforts Strategies
There is an increased interest regarding cooperative, or shared, service delivery options for fire and EMS agencies. Although often thought of only as “merger” approaches, cooperative efforts actually come in multiple forms. They may be as simple as enhanced mutual and automatic aid practices, or they may involve a myriad of shared functional strategies like collaborative fire prevention and training programs, common standard operating guidelines, or joint apparatus and equipment purchasing, to name a few.…
Benchmarking for Improvement: ISO and ESCI Team Up
How do you demonstrate to the people and community you serve that you’re doing a good job? Do you have a clear, definitive method to show you provide quality service with the resources you have? What data points are appropriate for a true peer review and accurate comparison of your service delivery? Many fire departments have conducted benchmarking studies for years, but when you review the comparisons, the data points are often measured differently among…
