Retained crewing

[Speck]

I'm on a ret station that until the end of last year had a recruitment problem.  We now have a near full crew which is great except I am furthest from the station with 11 of us looking for 6 seats.  I give day and night cover and still miss the truck.  I'm a driver which you think would be of benefit but the oic would rather drive himself and leave me behind.  Sadly his attitude is that we should move nearer to the station - needless to say this isn't an option, I already took a lower paid job so I could give day cover!  

Ok I feel better for getting that off my chest.  Now if anyone has any practical solutions about shift patterns / crewing suggestions that they have used I'd be grateful.  I've been in the service for 5 years but I don't know how much longer I can carry on banging my head against a brick wall!

[kurnal]

Depends on your priorities.
Every second counts they say. Would it be better to get the pump rolling as soon as possible with 4 rather than wait a  another minute for 5?

Would it be better for the public if we delayed the turnout to select the most competent crew from the 11?

Is it fair on the public to delay the turnout so we can adjust the crewing to consider individuals training/ experience and development needs?

Can the OIC take charge and operate the pump at the same time?

old chestnuts every one!  and all more relevant than ever.

[zimmy]

Kurnal,

Although your questions are valid and no doubt rhetorical the overriding answer to them is that the responsibility of the IC is the H&S of his crew and therefore should only be turning out with 4 if there is no other option but more importantly, he cannot do two jobs at once. To effectively carry out a DRA and monitor his crew he should do either job correctly and not two half jobs partly!

[Rich]

This is a topic that rears its head now and again.  I know of a retained crewing system that has an 'A' crew and a 'B' crew with taking it in turns to ride each shout.  Now there are the world of problems associated with the system as not all ff's are available all the time, JO cover, drivers etc but they do seem to manage it.  I believe the ff's on the crew who's turn it is are giving priority to ride first then back filled with the other crew.

This system would only work with a strict availablity system so that you would know who will be attending so not to hold up the turn out.

Message for Kurnal:

I am a w/t ff and recently attended a persons reported house fire with a crew of 4.  (2nd pump mobilised was 10 mins away) We couldn't get very close to the house as access was via an alleyway.  The OIC was doing his bit, the BA crew were committed and rescued a disabled casualty more or less straight away then re-entered to fight the fire and search for other persons.  Who was the pump operator, the entry control officer, the person administering O2 to the casualty in a dark front garden and the person putting informative messages back to control (bearing in mind I am about 50 meters away from the pump?  Answer: Me, does this sound like safe working to you, I think not?  If you know you have people coming in wait the few extra seconds for them - then we all come back safely to rescue again.  Only proceed with 4 as a last resort.

Thanks,  I'm glad I got that off my chest!

[kurnal]

Fully agree Rich.
The answer is to have as good a handle as possible on availability and if you know the 5th crew member is likely to likely to arrive in the next two minutes to wait- because assuming that the the jobs a goer with peak workloads for the crew for the first 15 minutes after you arrive, the two minutes you lose will gain you 13 minutes extra work on the fireground.

[Game on]

Speck,

If I were you I would approach your station manager or RSM and mention that the OIC is driving when there are other drivers available. This seems to be purely selfish on his part. He is the OIC for that reason, to be in charge, not to drive the appliance. It sounds like he wants the best of both worlds.
Our OIC only drives if there are no other drivers showing available and he is the last resort.

[Paul]

TRy running a weekly rosta system.  If you have two crews, with drivers and Oic then you could run it is each week a crew has priority.  If any individual has the night / day off then call someone from the oposite crew.

This way everyone gets a fair crack at turning out and turnout times are maintained and full crews who are on call actually ride.

Simple really

[messy]

I know if it were my house on fire, I'd want a pump and crew ASAP. Whether the OIC drove is one issue, but having a rota which may mean nearer personnel are overlooked is mad.

I would get severely peed off if I found out later that the attendance to my house had been delayed due to an arrangement which had been made in order to give everyone a "fair crack at turning out".

Call me old fashioned but this isn't some kind of game where you take turns. A safe rapid turn out must be the priority, and introducing schemes to delay turnouts to ensure equity of shouts is selfish and perhaps illegal

[kurnal]

Hiya Messy
Just hang on a minute.
To keep that pump on the run 24/7 needs a pool of good guys and gals. To maintain their interest and competence they all need a fair crack at the whip of turnouts and experience. Without this as speck says- they get fed up, lose  their competence, and  eventually leave the service  which leaves the station short of crew and  the pump off the run for long periods of time. Now that would pee you off if rather than being delayed a couple of minutes the pump was off the run 5 days a week!

Society takes retained firefighters absolutely for granted. We should not get upset at the concept of firefighters running a rota. Why get upset with the good  folk providing the service- after all it is the politicians who have decided that by putting a retained station in your community EVERY call will have a 5 minute delay in turning out. So don't lets lose sight of that and blow an exra minute or two out of proportion.

[Peter]

A station I was involved with set up a moving rota for places following influx of new staff - the rota moved on one space following every call. 1-6 rode, 7-9 stood aside It worked well to ensure there was a spread of experience within the crew - it also reduced 'racing' to the station. I am satisfied it increased safety, overall crew competence, with minimal impact on turn out time. The highest rank on the station could always overide if the call details justified (ie persons reported)  The Brigade now has a new system on trial where the crew ring in & availability is automatically monitored - saving any trips to book in/out or change tallys/boards - changed availability is texted to CM/WM to track & manage issues.

[Paul]

Messy,

Obviously you have never managed a fire station and have never had to manage a Retained crew.  Obviously a safe rapid turn out is essential and the turn out figures are around 5 minutes to get a retain appliance on the road.

With the new working time directive in place the option of having as many retained crew on call at the same time does not work in practice.  A balance of time on call and time at rest must be considered, and the brigade I worked for ran at around 80hours cover for the week for each individual.  This had to take into consideration the full time working hours for that individual.  So you can see simply having 13 or 15 retained crew on call at the same time isn’t workable any more.  

Also you must consider the fact that bringing new crew into the picture is also an issue.  If you allow the full crew to be on call all the time, how do the ones that are just that bit slower or live that bit further away gain the experience to man a retained appliance.  We must also consider moral.  If the same crew always turn out on that machine, then inevitably you start to loose staff, as they loose interest.

Manning a retained appliance is more about having the appliance available 100% of the time.  If you need to do this through recruiting as many crew as is allowed then this is how you must do it.  How you manage keeping that crew must be done carefully.

If we thought on the lines of fastest turnout every time, manned by the nearest available crew then you would loose crew and that same appliance is only available 60% or 40% of the time, which in turn means that people living in that area covered by that retained station have to wait event longer for another retained appliance from another area.

As for being ilegal for running this type of management then perhaps you would like to question the ethics of the whole working practices of the majority of fire services throughout the UK.

Yet another fine example of the public taking the fire service for granted.  Gald I'm out of it!!

Not so simple Messy!!

[Andy Cole]

I am on a 1 pump R/T station with 9 FF, 2 LFF and a Station Officer, 12 potential riders!, more than half of these guys (and girls) provide full cover (myself being one of them).

I live and work about 200yds away from the station so I can catch every single shout if I need to.

We operate a weekend duty crew system that 90% of the time works perfectly well, each of the Lff's has a crew, one of 5 and one of 6, which cover alternate weekends from 1200H on a sat. till 0000H on a monday, with the crew of 5 the first 'offduty' member to turn in gets to ride, the Station Officer can attend onthe the pump if the full crew has not turned in, if there is a full crew he can follow in the Landrover if it is Persons Reported or Trapped etc!. No Lff or above is allowed to drive a pump on blue lights full stop in our brigade which would solve Specks problem, this does seem to have flaws though because it means that one of our Lff's who is a professional driver isn't allowed to drive the appliance even if the Stn O is in charge, the argument is that his skills and experience as an Lff can be put to much better use than working as a pump operator/ driver for which other crew members may be available for!, the other side to that is how can a FF gain the experience and knowledge the Lff has if the FF's always having to drive and let the Lff go BA!

The Duty crew system falls down when it is not used properly, the theory works well but it has to have the full backing of everyone who uses it!, it fails (or at least doesn't work as it should rather than fails because the end result of the pump rolling out the door hasn't failed for as long as I can remember!!) it fails when either someone who is on duty has 'forgotten' it's thier weekend and either turns out too slowly or not atall or worse when one of the duty crew is unavailiable, for example is going out on saturday night, this can be avoided by asking one ofthe non duty to cover!

When it works it works very well, I think it is important for some sort of shift system to be in place because as has been said already never getting a turn out is not good for morale and causes people to not bother to rush down thinking that they will miss it anyway or worse still leave, leading to the problems mentioned above. It is important that everyone gets a fair crack at the whip to maintain both morale and skill levels, we had a (very slightly) delayed turn out a few weeks ago when by coincidence one night at about 11.30pm three of the closet living FF's were unavailiable and a shout came in, the remaining crew members all casually came down to the station fully expecting not to see the pump and were actually genuinely surprised to catch it!.

Another way to do it speaking as someone who as I said at the beggining could catch every shout is to give your seat up, obvioulsy I always turn in as quickly as I can and get myself ready as quickly as I can, if however the seventh person to turn in is one of the poor sods who always misses it why not stand down and let him go occasionally?, it doesn't affect the turn out time.

Specks, whatever you do it must be fully supported by everyone or it simply won't work, good luck and stick with it mate!

[Speck]

Thanks for your advice everyone.  I can vouch personally that this problem does affect morale. Still I won't chuck in the towel just yet hopefully we can get oic to take on board one of you suggestions!

[Fireguy1230]

I work at a busy 2 pump retained station and up until 2 years ago we had people fighting over one another to get on the machine if it was a one pump turnout.

 We adopted a "tally" system whereby each crew member has a tally with their name on it. These tallies are placed on a riding board which contains 1st Crew, 2nd Crew and Spare.

 If a shout comes in the people whose tallies are in the 1st Crew get priority to go. When the appliance has gone, the board gets changed so that the 2nd Crew move up to fill the 1st Crew, the Spare guys fill the 2nd Crew, and the 1st crew (who have gone on the shout) move down to the bottom of the board (Spare).

 After the next shout, the board gets rotated again etc. Its a fair system and ensures that everyone is getting their fair share of shouts.

 The only exception is if we get a call where there is a life risk, then its first in and straight on the machine.

[Firewolf]

Ive read with great intrest some of the points raised here.

Was quite amazed at Messy's comments.

Retained cover is based on retained personnel being able to reach the station in a set time.

Now if a full crew has reported to the station before you get there Speck then   your OIC has every right to proceed and turn out from station.

It all depends on the minimum crewing allowed on the pump at your station - which I suspect is probably four ?

An OIC shouldn't allow a pump to turn out with minimum crewing unless he/she really has to.

If its a case of waiting an extra minute for you to report in then he should do so.Simple as that. If he isn't doing so without justification then he may committing a disciplinary offence under your brigades own policies/procedures, worst still he may be commiting an offence under current health and safety legislation.

Its all well and good your OIC telling you to move closer - but is he going to pay the mortgage / moving fees for you?

The other issue here is that all firefighters retained or ortherwise must be allowed to gain experience on the fire ground. It is essential! Nothing can replace practical on the job experience and the excellent service our retained colleagues provide is very much down to that factor.