Posted on: 1st October 2020
Staffordshire to become first Fire and Rescue Service to integrate their resource management, emergency response and preventative activities, with connected solutions from Infographics
Infographics today announced that Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service (FRS) will become the first FRS to adopt an integrated solution that seamlessly joins up their work and data flows across Resource Management departments, Emergency Response, and Prevention and Protection.*
This ground-breaking project will include the implementation of Infographics’ latest ‘off-the-shelf’ integrated solutions and interfaces in order to achieve a UK (and most likely global) ‘first’ within the Fire and Rescue sector.
The project at Staffordshire involves a major transformation programme to create a closed, continuous information loop that connects the flow of data and tasks across, and between, the three key pillars of FRS duties – Resource Management, Emergency Response/Dispatch and Preventative Work. The latter will include all activities that fall within FRS Prevention, Protection and Hydrant Management responsibilities.
Howard Watts, Director of Community Safety at Staffordshire Fire and Rescue, said:
“We are very pleased to be working with Infographics and implementing these systems into our Service. This forms part of our commitment to continual improvement and investing in firefighter safety. Our transformation journey will see truly joined up systems creating efficient and effective use of data across the organisation.”
Infographics’ specialist FRS Resource Management platform (FireWatch) connects data and departmental tasks, and manages their impacts across core functions, including HR, Skills and Assets. It also includes live bi-directional interfaces with third party Dispatch/Command and Control Systems to provide intelligent availability data to Control Room operators, and to process and calculate the impact of ongoing incidents back into the core departmental systems.
Incident data additionally flows automatically to Infographics’ Prevention and Protection system (Prevent + Protect) and premise records. This, along with additional data such as risk level, building categories, vulnerable person data and other information, can then be utilised to target preventative resources in the most effective way and where the greatest impact on safety can be achieved.
The Prevent + Protect system provides one integrated location and database for safety audits, enforcement, operational risk, ‘safe & well’ and hydrant information. This integrated data set – combined with elements such as fire fighter risk analysis, typical occupancy, number of storeys, and so on – could also be utilised to help inform Emergency Response decision making.
Russell Wood, Commercial Manager at Infographics, said:
“The ultimate goal for any FRS is to be able to effectively plan and manage their resources across all areas in a unified way, and to remove procedural gaps, manual processes and highly-disjointed data sets. If an FRS is to be able to understand the impact of their activities on risk and response, and to continually retrospect and improve, having that integrated set of data and tasks is essential.”
The new project will include, as one seamlessly-integrated solution suite, deployment of the:
- FireWatch Cloud, with the implementation of the complete FireWatch suite of integrated Human Resource Planning and Management Solutions – including HR, Availability, Self-service, Payments, Fleet, Assets, Training & Development, and Health & Safety (all delivered via the Microsoft Azure Cloud-based solution)
- FireWatch App, for iPhone and Android devices, allowing users to directly access data and tasks for Leave, Skills, Training, Availability and Assets, and to monitor and act on personalised Key Performance Indicators in one modern and easy-to-use place. (Rather than multiple disjointed systems and Apps)
- Prevent + Protect solution, our specialist Case Management Suite for Prevention, Protection and Hydrant Management, also delivered via the Microsoft Azure Cloud
- FireWatch Mobilisation Interface for the Capita Vision Command and Control Solution, allowing the FRS to automatically share live vehicle availability and incident data between the systems
The key business benefits of the new fully-integrated solution will include:
- A continually updated, live information loop providing a complete picture of operations and resource at any given moment
- Reduction in risk due to having more accurate information across skills, availability, assets and premise information
- A connected organisation and network of teams across multiple areas of FRS responsibility
- Shared live data and intelligence feeding through to emergency dispatch systems
- Significant direct saving opportunities through efficient working and optimum resourcing
- Reduced number of suppliers, and direct IT maintenance and support costs
- Reduced internal IT infrastructure, support and training costs
- Reduced manual workarounds, and related IT interface development effort, issues and cost
- Greater IT resilience and faster upgrades through Microsoft Azure Cloud delivery
*To the best of our knowledge following market research
