THE DOCUMENTATION DILEMMA: ONE SOLUTION
In this age of documentation and compliance, how would you rate your department’s ability to store and retrieve the data needed to justify requests for additional personnel or equipment or to satisfy state and federal mandatory requirements? Your department, for example, already should have implemented policies for meeting documentation requirements established by the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (SARA Title III) and the Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Standard (OSHA 29 CFR 1910.120).
“Whoa! Wait a minute!” you might be saying. “We’re in the midst of completing a multitude of projects and simply don’t have the time to address these programs right away. We’ll get to them as soon as possible.”
When you begin is your department’s decision, but don’t forget that the old hourglass is running down. Considering that compiling the data is mandatory, however, you should begin to keep accurate records of daily activities to make sure that the accomplishments of your personnel and department do not become lost in the shuffle and impossible to retrieve.
“What about firefighter training, fire prevention programs, fire and medical responses, public education programs, and training of probationary personnel? What about vehicle and station maintenance, EMS training, and service calls? And don’t forget records and report writing, physical training, special projects, implementing new policies and procedures, rules and regulations, committee and officers meetings. .. How can we accomplish all these things and provide accurate documentation too?” you ask.
All I can say is that it can be done, and if our experience at the Town of Palm Beach (FL) Fire-Rescue Department is any indication, it must be done. “Documentation” and “justification” have become two ever-recurrent, inescapable terms not only for fire departments but for all community leaders.
THE PALM BEACH EVALUATION
An independent consultant was called in to evaluate the managerial and operational components of our department in 1989. The action grew out of a movement headed by community special-interest groups and leaders looking to save money and wondering whether reorganizing our department would help that objective. (Sound familiar?)
The level of services Palm Beach taxpayers would receive from their emergency fire and EMS personnel came to depend on only one factor: whether the fire-rescue chief and the administration could accurately justify and document the department’s managerial and operational needs, capabilities, and overall work product. As it turned out, the department’s evaluation (cost-effective study) was positive overall, but first many beads of sweat had fallen and various areas the study identified as needing improvement had to be addressed.
At the end of the study, the consultant/analyst commented: “Your department is operationally sound and is accomplishing a massive amount of work output…but how much of your daily activities can you prove through accurate documentation?”
OUR SOLUTION
In 1988 our department had attempted to implement a documentation mechanism, a hard-copy program that would record the hours operations personnel expended in daily training activities. The information we collected, however, showed only a small portion of the actual number of hours our personnel expended on a multitude of activities, and the data we had compiled were extremely difficult to retrieve at a moment’s notice. In other words, personnel simply were not getting credit for all their efforts in many subject matter areas. This first attempt at documentation became the basis for evaluating other programs that would meet our needs.
We chose an extremely flexible program that can be adapted to the needs of any department. Initially instituted through hard-copy input, we used a simple data base and spreadsheet computer program that made it possible to retrieve an extraordinary amount of data easily.
THE DAILY TRAINING AND ACTIVITY REPORT PROGRAM
The objective of our “Daily Training and Activity Report” program is to document the daily activities of all operations personnel, whether the function was performed entirely or partially and whether it was done on a regular shift or an extra shift. This approach has provided us with accurate and individual documentation of training, emergency responses, and nontraining activities.
The program allows each individual to measure his/her work output and earn the credit for the time expended in a vast number of activity areas. Officers can review members’ accomplishments through the daily reports prepared by each department member. Daily, monthly, and annual (or any other time period) reports can be retrieved for each individual, station, company, shift, or specific activity area. The employee’s I.D. number is used to identify records. Other information categories, or fields, exhibited on the report form can be used in combinations to build “queries” for statistics in report form.
DEVELOPING A CUSTOMIZED PROGRAM
Creating a training and activities data collection and retrieval program involves the following steps:
- Analyze the category areas for which data are to be gathered and stored. We chose 19 categories that included Committee Work, Fire Alarms/Responses, Medical Training, Public Education, and Testing/Validation. The list should be tailored to your department’s needs. This listing then becomes the “Daily Activity Catego ry Key.”
- Number each category for computer-tracking purposes. This category number is entered on the Daily Training and Activity Report Form (see illustration).
- Examine each category’ area to determine the subject matter areas to be tracked in each category. These areas also should be assigned a numher to facilitate tracking. We, for example, have included the following subject-matter entries under the Fire Prevention Inspection category (No. 5):
- Inspections
- Re inspect ions
- Preincident profile
- Residential inspections
- Postfire inspections
- Systems check
- Computer/data entry
These activity areas help ensure that an individual receives appropriate credit for accomplishments while on duty. The “subject matter key” and the “category key” are expandable. Items may be added at any time, hut note that changes made after numbers have been assigned to categories or subject matter areas can affect the final result.
Two fields may he added to the Daily Training and Activity Report Form: hours (the amount of time expended in a particular subject matter area) and type (the type of training/activity in which the employee participated). The training/activity types in our program are designated w ith the initial letter of the activity — C = class; M = meetings; and A fire alarms, medical alarms, or service calls—making it possible to track these activities.
For expedience, time periods are listed in quarter-hour increments (to the closest quarter hour after completion of the activity).
EQUIPMENT
We use an IBM system AS400. All stations are networked with this mainframe system (this is not required for program use), and officers can retrieve specific statistical data. Employees submit their daily hard-copy reports to a data processor, who enters the data into the computer.
Departments whose communities have data-processing facilities and personnel should consult with these individuals before implementing the program. They can he very helpful. The Town of Palm Beach computer programmer developed our department’s system—with great results.
