CASE STUDY

Industry Sector - Government

Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service Blazes the Trail to Better Service Delivery with FireWatch

Scenario:

Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service wished to introduce a flexible solution for human resource management that would meet with Home Office reporting requirements.

Background:

The constant need to improve service quality and safety standards represents an ongoing challenge for the UK’s fire and rescue services. In meeting this challenge of continuous improvement in the high-risk environment where the Fire Service operates, competence, that is the ability of individuals and organisations to consistently deliver targeted workplace performance, has become a key driver.

The national training for competency framework includes the development of competency specifications for the various fire fighting roles. These competency role-maps form the foundation for assessing training outcomes and service delivery, and act as objective measurement criteria for improvements. The development of role maps has led, in turn, to the development of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), training materials, concepts and practices that are being progressively introduced by Chief Fire Officers.

Implementation and Business Benefits:

The successful implementation of competency management within the Fire Service has set new, wide-ranging requirements for brigade computerised Human Resource Management (HRM) systems. FireWatch was developed specifically to address these.

FireWatch delivers a competency-based HRM system incorporating all of the principles outlined in the Competence Framework for the Fire Service endorsed by the Joint Training Committee of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council. These require that at all stages of recruitment, promotion, task execution and performance are judged against objective measures of competency. With FireWatch individual, team and overall service performance are all judged against a predefined set of competency-related indicators. Dynamic rostering & OMPI reporting modules can be linked directly to absence and training records to provide a comprehensive, dynamic crewing system which facilitates savings in both planning time and money.

FireWatch is built using Microsoft’s component-based architecture. This has enabled Infographics to incorporate its existing knowledge capture and process management engine within the product. This feature supports workflow and decision rules that allow users to build templates that personalise recruitment, skills matching, training course development and skills acquisition planning processes to meet the needs of different brigades.

This ability to drive key human resource processes to a user-determined rule set enables FireWatch to deliver a comprehensive set of manpower planning functions rather than just acting as a personnel recording system.

Technical Overview:

There were a number of operational and technical criteria that Norfolk set.

Technical requirements were that the system needed to be:
  • Built using a modern, multi-tier architecture that divided application code between database, business logic and front end user interface
  • A flexible object-based development model that would support cost-effective enhancement and evolution over time
  • Capable of deployment over wide and local area networks
  • Able to support a standard Web browser for information access over remote links
  • Able to interface with industry-standard diary, email and messaging systems
Operational requirements were that the system needed to:
  • Support Fire Service-specific grade and post structures
  • Support user-defined processes to manage training, occupational health and manpower planning
  • Share employee availability and competency information between training, critical certification, holiday, occupational health and the manpower planning/rota systems
  • Be easy to understand and operate

Norfolk selected a Microsoft NT and BackOffice infrastructure as the best platform for its new HRM application. FireWatch, with its MS Outlook-style interface, built using MS Visual Studio and MS SQL Server with links to MS Office for correspondence management, met all of the operational and technical requirements. The choice of a Microsoft-based product and infrastructure reflected the brigade's wish to install an information environment that was economic in acquisition and that could be readily extended to meet future requirements. The ability of FireWatch’s 3-tier client server architecture to operate over local and wide area networks, and the ease of development of custom Web interface clients were all important factors in product selection.

FireWatch

The FireWatch product is packaged in a modular structure that includes:

  • Personnel, rota, time recording 
  • Competency and training centre management
  • Health and safety
  • Process automation

The system is designed to support the human resource management processes within brigades from end-to-end rather than simply recording personnel activities. By integrating all areas of human resource activity the system is able to support complex manpower availability planning with graphical reporting of performance outcomes against competency standards.