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Does Your Department Specialise in Plate Spinning?
In a recent discussion in the Rope Rescue Group on FFN, I referred to many departments as "plate spinners". You can read the full discussion at:
http://www.firefighternation.com/group/roperescue/forum/topic/show?id=889755%3ATopic%3A882697
I'd like to say that this term used to describe many departments is mine, as I feel that it sums up many the world over, however it's not- it was suggested to me by someone who heard it from someone else. (You know the old, "a friend of friend's brother, who's cousin’s dad’s uncle, etc!!!")
It's not the most flattering term to use, but I also believe that it sums up many departments very well. It's not necessarily the members own doing, it may be management, it may the mutual aid agreements (or lack of), it may be legislated, it may be lack of funding or it may simply be a case of "no one else does it, so we will".
Let me explain the term and have a think about your department, OBJECTIVELY. Take the emotional attachment hat off and look long and hard at your department.
Plate Spinning was a term used to describe the nature of what many fire departments do. We spin plates- in other words, we do a bit of fire, a bit of EMS, a bit of confined space, a bit of USAR, a bit of HAZMAT, a bit of trench rescue, a bit of SAR, a bit of rope rescue, a bit of road crash rescue and so on. And we spend so much time and effort running between the plates and keeping them in motion.
We need to be more than plate spinners. Why?
* First and foremost, there's lives at risk. Now it may sound stupid, but we can never lose sight of this. We need to be prepared for any incident that is thrown our way, in order to save lives.
* It's often public money we're spending on equipment and training. Many of these require many dollars worth of equipment to perform properly. This is especially true with specialised topics such as the suite of "rescue's" as listed above. Rope rescue for example, requires more than a couple of karabiners, a figure 8 descender and some rope.
* We must acknowledge that the hours often required to maintain minimum skill set is often beyond what many departments are capable of doing- this includes career and volunteer. (Contrary to what many may believe, career station staff don't have all the time in the world to do training- they're often too busy on runs, etc)
So how do we move on from being plate spinners?
* We need to look at our core business. Look at statistics for calls. This will often determine what we need to focus on. If we're only getting 2 calls per year for HAZMAT, why focus so much effort on it?
* We need to get in place proper mutual aid agreements- NOW! Find out what your neighbouring department does. Find out what equipment they have, train with them, and work with them. Don't hesitate to call them ASAP. We all know it's a lot easier to cancel a responding unit than it is to get them rolling in the first place. We need to collaborate with our neighbours. We need to communicate with our neighbours.
* We may need to swallow some pride. We don't have to do EVERYTHING. it is OK to acknowledge your limitations and use other departments that are already equipped and trained to do a particular task.
* We need to pre-plan to determine our drivers. Pre-planning sets the tone for so many benefits to the department and the public.
* We need to educate our managers and decision makers. Educate them about core business. Educate them about the real dollars required to properly equip a department to do a job. Educate them about the real time it takes to maintain minimum skill levels.
* We must acknowledge that it is often public money we're pissing up against the wall. Spend it wisely on your core business or we risk losing the support of the public. (This was highlighted really well recently on FFN when someone asked a question about raising $ to purchase a million dollar truck- the replies from many members offered some great alternatives, with a much reduced outlay for the department and the community.)
* We need to think like a business. We need to be smart about how we manage funds (raise it, allocate it, spend it, justify it, etc) I run a training and consulting business and every major purchase is weighed up carefully- we look at the required outlay versus the Return on Investment (ROI). I'm not spending a fortune on equipment, only to have it sit in my factory collecting dust. I'm also not investing huge $ on my staff's professional development, if it's not of any benefit to the business- there has to be ROI in everything we do.
Is your department plate spinning or are you fair dinkum about doing the job properly, to the benefit of everyone?
Add a Comment
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Comment by kel229 on September 7, 2008 at 5:41pm
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It's easy for Chief Brunacini to coin the phrase "Department of Everything," he had a thousand firefighters. Including myself, we have 12. So to say I have to be highly skilled in every discipline is impossible. Maybe we need to be able to do the basics in every discipline but we need to worry about what kills firefighters. That's single family residences.
If we have to be "plate spinners," we should concentrate on the big plate, house fires, spinning in the middle and do the best we can with the small plates, i.e. hazmat, tech rescue.
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Comment by Ben Waller on September 7, 2008 at 8:26am
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I disagree with several of your points. I have no problem with emergency services being run in a business-like fashion, but there are several differences between what most of us do in the public sector and the private-sector model that you espouse here.
First, ROI is NOT our primary function - saving lives and other people's property is. How much value are you going to put on someone's life? If you don't assign a dollar (or euro, or ruble, or whatever) value to someone's life, you can't factor that value into an ROI, which makes accurate ROI calculations inaccurate at best and meaningless and confusing at worst.
Our core business isn't just picking one or two high-frequency events and ignoring the rest. Fire-rescue departments are expected to be "All Hazards" departments. If that means that we respond to fires, EMS calls, extrication, technical rescue, hazmat, water rescue, or whatever, then that's what we have to do. If some of those incident types - like hazmat - are "High Risk, Low Occurrance" (HRLO) calls, we can't just say that we'll let someone else do it or that we're not going to spend any money on it because it only happens twice per year. HRLO calls require expensive training, equipment, responder mindsets, and command and safety procedures. If you don't fund the gear and the training and command practice time, you're going to kill responders - and that will REALLY screw up your ROI. Put the bulk of your resources toward your high-frequency events - fine. However, the low-frequency ones tend to be the ones that can really devastate the community and/or your department. Those are risks most communities and departments - at least the smart ones - aren't willing to take.
Unlike the private sector, we're not here to put a profit on someone's bottom line. Our bottom line is to keep our communities as safe as possible. That's a pretty good ROI. Communities don't pay for anything that they don't think is necessary. That's why every fire department, EMS system, rescue squad, hazmat team, or whatever has a budget and a budget process.
Mutual aid isn't available everywhere. I work on an isolated barrier island in the Atlantic Ocean. We have one neighboring department with road access to us. They are terrific neighbors, but they're busy, too. They can get us one - or occasionally two - engines within 15 to 30 minutes, and after that, we're on our own for an extended period of time. If the single access bridge is blocked, no mutual aid is available, period. There are other isolated departments around, too. Hawaii and Alaska are examples. So are some of the remote departments in the Western US desert, mountains, and plains. Mutual aid is great - when you can get it - but a blanket statement to use it frankly isn't realistic in a lot of places.
And, like it or not, we ARE the "Department of Everything". Chief (ret) Al Brunacini coined that concept several years ago, and it fits the situation pretty well. People are going to call us for every kind of emergency imaginable - and some that defy the imagination. Call it plate spinning if you'd like, but in many places the all-hazard requirement is legally required by municipal legislation, department charter, or other simply by public expectation. You're right about us spending public money - and if we don't meet the public's expectations, then they're not going to give us as much of their money to spend next year, or the year after, or...
You also missed an important concept that has been ignored by most of the private sector for a long time, and is just now becoming a hot item for many private companies. That concept is Continuity of Business. (COB) Prior to electronic information technology becoming widely available in the last 20 years, COB wasn't a big deal to most companies, because they were simply quite limited in how much information they could process, store, and retrieve. Computers and the internet changed that. Now it is possible to maintain customer databases, accounts recievable, budgets, and business plans electronically, back them up off-site, and administrate them. That takes people, equipment, infrastructure, and electricity - all things that must be paid for. Those things are a big waste of money, with essentially zero ROI if your business is never wiped out by a fire or disaster. The smartest and most competitive parts of the private sector are doing more and more investment in COB. Why? Because it's the only practical way to ensure that the business survives an unplanned event, despite the lack of up-front ROI. We in the public sector emergency services primarily deal with other people's unplanned events. That should give us a hint that up-front ROI isn't the bottom line for us.
Your plate-spinning model also ignores one of the most important parts of the private-sector model, the concept of productivity. It is easy to focus a private business on one or two core functions, IF that focus keeps the company productive and there is no duty to focus on non-core missions. The private sector has that choice. The public sector generally does not have that choice, but now we have the public's demand that we increase our productivity. If that means following another part of the private sector model - diversification - then that's what will keep our organizations viable. More challenging, you bet. Plate spinning - not on your life. It's just a combination of diversifying, being more productive, and ensuring COB - in other words, adapting to changes to ensure departmental survival.
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