
Lessons in Productivity
MANAGEMENT
IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY is no longer just a fashionable concept—it’s now a political and economic necessity. Tax and expenditure limitations, lower sales and property tax revenues, less federal aid, and the public’s demand for better service and reduced costs add up to one pressing challenge for the modern fire service: improve productivity.
Productivity is the measured result of a triad of components common to any workplace: workload, efficiency, and effectiveness.
Workload is the amount of work performed within a standard time period. Examples of workload measures include the number of fire prevention inspections completed each day, the number of arson arrests each year, or the number of training academy instructional hours each week.
Efficiency is most often expressed as an input/output or output/input ratio. The cost for each fire prevention inspection, arson arrest, or hour of academy instruction are all efficiency measures.
Effectiveness is the assessment of a specific program or an organization’s success in achieving desired results. Several effectiveness measures might include reducing fire deaths through a public education program, reducing arson fires by improving investigation techniques and increasing the rate of convictions, or state certification for a predetermined number of firefighters after academy instruction.
Increasing productivity requires improvements in workload, efficiency, and effectiveness; it’s not, however, reduction of the Insurance Services Office rating. Surprisingly, the ISO never originally intended for its esoteric evaluation of the reliability and adequacy of a community’s fire defenses to be used by any fire department as a self-selected measure of organizational effectiveness and improved productivity.
Improving productivity can help a department through financially troubled times and improve its image.
Furthermore, improving productivity isn’t necessarily providing more bang for the buck. Some departments equate more “bang” with building another fire station or hiring additional firefighters. In most jurisdictions, this isn’t the kind of bang the public desires. Most citizens are satisfied with the present level of fire risk, fire losses, and response times. The public wants more tax dollar utility and greater efficiency, which means better use of existing resources.
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
A formal, organization-wide productivity improvement program is one way to enhance fire department operations. Typically, a PIP examines both the technical and the human sides of an organization. Productivity improvement areas could include work standards and measurements, planning and scheduling, work simplification, greater employee participation, improving motivation, and job enrichment.
The City of Aurora (Colo.) Fire Department, for example, critically examined its organizational structure, personnel, technologies, procedures, policies, and processes in response to a 1983 citywide PIP. Its improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, and workloads included:
- combining several rescue squads into paramedic engines, saving 5200,000 per year per rescue squad;
- replacing one engine and ladder company with a “quint” (or combination engine and ladder truck), saving 5400,000 initially and $80,000 per year thereafter;
- centralizing staff and firefighter assignments. A suppression division staffing captain now controls all firefighter and equipment assignments; this has significantly improved coordination and reduced overtime costs;
- providing a “roving” microcomputer for suppression division firefighters. One paramedic lieutenant entered the department’s entire equipment inventory using a database software package that tracks the location and status of all firefighting equipment;
- computerizing the annual fire and life-safety business inspection process;
- involving suppression division and rescue division firefighters in the annual building inspection process;
- replacing fire prevention bureau uniformed firefighters with nonuniformed civilians;
- using individual activity logs and reports to more accurately track and compile fire prevention bureau inspectors’ workloads and to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of inspection activities.
- signing mutal aid and overlapping response agreements with the Denver Fire Department and the Cunningham Fire Protection District. This eliminated the need to build at least one $650,000 fire station; and
- merging the training division staff with the Denver Fire Department, creating the Rocky Mountain Fire Academy. This agreement saved Aurora about 57,000,000 (the department would have had to start from scratch) and is the first of several possible joint ventures, including a fire apparatus repair facility, selected hazardous materials responses, and a common dispatching center.
BENCHMARKS OF FIRE PROTECTION EXCELLENCE
Several progressive productivity improvement measures might include:
- drastically reducing the frequency and severity of firefighter injuries and smoke inhalation cases by implementing a department-wide safety program including a mandatory turnout gear and SCBA policy for at least all structural fires, car fires, and haz-mat incidents;
- reducing fires and fire deaths within the jurisdiction by sectioning the city into grids and assigning fire management areas to local station officers;
- developing a descriptive and inspirational mission statement for each division of the department;
- setting realistic yet challenging performance objectives for each division of the department and every program of the fire department’s budget;
- establishing individual performance and workload criteria (especially at the senior command and staff level) based on members’ knowledge, skill, ability, job maturity, and career aspirations;
- combining selected staff and line positions;
- using a citizen satisfaction survey to assess division or departmental effectiveness;
- using containment or fire control time to assess suppression division efficiency;
- using postfire analysis sessions as a learning activity and training needs assessment tool—not as a medium to attach blame;
- merging the building department’s inspection responsibilities with your department’s fire prevention/inspections bureau;
- hiring a fire protection engineer as the fire marshal;
- developing a career plan for each department member;
- implementing an officer development program;
- developing a mentor system for firefighters and junior officers; and
- using state certification guidelines as the minimum training and competency criteria.
COPRODUCTIVITY PROGRAMS
Did you know that taxpayers regularly help their local government deliver public services, which in turn improves productivity? Examples of such coproductivity include placing trash containers or piles of leaves near the street curb for city pickup; not parking on snowremoval routes and fire lanes; and installing security locks, lights, alarm systems, and smoke detectors.
The City of Detroit and the fire departments of Aurora and Colorado Springs all enlisted their citizens to help deliver fire protection services. Each city, using a special coproductivity program, significantly improved its productivity and, surprisingly, enhanced its organization’s image, too.
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit’s successful efforts to reduce the number of fires during the city’s infamous Devil’s Night (Halloween night) firesetting and vandal spree is a dramatic coproductivity case study. Mayor Coleman Young and his staff successfully convinced the public to help itself solve a communitywide arson problem.
Detroit’s comprehensive campaign, which began in the mid-80s, mobilized 17,000 concerned citizens and city workers dedicated to one common cause—reducing Devil’s Night fires. This community’s concerted effort included:
— 1,500 neighborhood watch groups and block clubs looking for arsonists and suspicious characters;
—special citizens-band patrols and student volunteers with portable fire extinguishers and mobile radios;
Devil’s night in Detroit
The number of arson fires reported in Detroit over the three-day Halloween weekend has declined since 1984, while the number of volunteer and city workers patrolling neighborhoods has climbed steadily.
The Detroit News
— 20 Domino’s Pizza car and van patrols;
— an elementary and junior high school poster/essay contest designed to get youngsters involved and concerned about the damage and dangers of arson and starting fires;
—a public information program encouraging homeowners to leave porch lights on, maintain a local fire watch, and impose a dusk-to-dawn curfew for their children; and
—generating cooperative media support. Most newspapers and television stations agreed to “low-profile” Devil’s Night stories, thereby reducing its destructive glamour and macabre mystique.
Additionally, the city reduced the number of arson targets by demolishing 675 vacant buildings and emptying large trash containers just before the long holiday weekend. Detroit also distributed 250,000 informational brochures encouraging homeowners to wet down their garbage and service station operators not to sell gasoline in portable containers. Detroit’s mayor also placed city trash collectors, dog catchers, and street sweepers on arson and fire patrol.
The success of this creative and innovative program is readily apparent from the drastic reduction in fire calls during the three-day holiday period.
Aurora, Colorado
The City of Aurora Fire Department developed two programs in late 1985 that place a share of fire prevention and life-safety inspection responsibilities with selected business owners.
Aurora requires child-care center operators to conduct daily, weekly, and monthly inspections of their facilities’ fire and life-safety components. Using a diplomatic approach and a special selfinspection form, Aurora’s firefighters convinced child-care center managers to participate in this program. A selfinspection form, the centerpiece of the program, is displayed near the alarm panel or on a readily visible bulletin board.
Statistics show that Aurora radically reduced child-care center fire code violations by almost 80% in the first six months of the program.
Aurora’s second self-help program requires owners of high-rise buildings and other target hazards to inspect quarterly and test annually their automatic sprinkler systems. An inspection and activity log is prominently displayed near each building’s main water control valve for quick code-compliance evaluation by firefighters.
Prior to implementing both programs, Aurora firefighters constantly reminded building owners and managers to inspect and test their building’s lifesafety systems. This often irritated the owners and placed the department in a strict code enforcement role.
Through these two Aurora programs, business owners and managers become personally responsible for a larger share of code activities within their structures. Aurora’s firefighters can advise and diplomatically sell fire prevention rather than mandate code enforcement.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
The Colorado Springs Fire Department also uses a self-help inspection program —this one targeted at low-hazard (B-1 and B-2) business occupancies such as doctors’ offices—that is impressively successful. During annual fire and life-safety building inspections conducted by the department’s suppression firefighters, B-1 or B-2 business owners are asked to inspect their own facility. If agreed upon, the department provides both verbal and written instructions, including a detailed explanation of its self-inspection form. An addressed, stamped envelope accompanies the form to help ensure an acceptable rate of return.
The Colorado Springs Fire Department reports a remarkable 98% return rate over the past two years for the inspection program, with no significant problems in getting people to comply.
Coproductivity programs illustrate the public’s willingness to assist local governments in delivering municipal services. They also reduce a community’s fire risk and generate significant community support. Most business owners will not only readily accept a greater share of code enforcement responsibility, but often genuinely welcome the opportunity to fulfill code requirements. This kind of fire department/citizen interaction can significantly enhance the fire department’s image within the community.
Volunteer and self-help coproductivity programs can help us get through financially turbulent and demanding times and better the quality of services in good times as well. Hence, fire chiefs can simultaneously do more with less in their jurisdictions by implementing innovative and exemplary productivity improvements similar to Detroit’s volunteer program and the self-help inspection programs instituted by the Colorado fire departments of Aurora and Colorado Springs.*
Special thanks to Shelly Cook, City Manager’s Office, City of Aurora (CO) for her generous research assistance in preparing this article.
Any fire department using a coproductivity program is asked to write the author with details at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ml 49783, or call (906) 635-2172.