By Robert Tutterow

My previous two columns have been about ways to cut fire station operating costs-both existing and new. These are costs that have no direct bearing on service delivery or firefighter safety. As stated in the previous columns, 49 percent of a building's lifespan costs are the ongoing costs for utilities, maintenance, and replacing furnishings. Items that were covered included materials selection for the exterior and interior of the station. This is a substantial sum of funds that, if properly managed, could be applied to apparatus, personal protective equipment (PPE), equipment, training, and other mission-critical items. In this column, there will be a bit more information on materials selection plus a tool that can be used to manage utility costs.

Minor but Big Payoff

There are minor expense items that have a big payback in a station's sustainability. These include corner guards for drywall-hopefully "abuse-resistant" drywall. Vinyl-wrapped ceiling tiles or epoxy painted drywall make for long-lasting ceilings. Flooring materials should be of materials that do not require vacuuming or waxing. Stainless steel is the most durable and easy to maintain material for kitchen appliances and cabinet surfaces. Never use particleboard for kitchen cabinets. Commercial-quality cooktops and ovens provide the best return on investment in a station where there is frequent cooking. Use porcelain or ceramic tiles in restrooms and shower areas.

Building Dashboard

And, now for the aforementioned tool-the building dashboard. Building dashboards are exactly what they sound like. Just as an automobile has a dashboard to inform drivers of what is going on with the vehicle, there is a growing number of buildings that have dashboards. In short, a building dashboard is a Web-based tool that provides real-time information about the building such as electricity or gas use, water use, temperature, humidity, and air quality. The dashboard can be configured to meet the needs of users and their capabilities, and expandability is almost limitless.

The dashboard can be used by management to monitor usage and detect areas of wasted energy. Firefighters can access the dashboard to learn more about energy usage and modify their behavior. If a department has more than one station, reducing energy consumption can become a competition. For example, several college campuses have placed building dashboards in their dormitories. They then have contests among the dorms to see which one can reduce its utility usage by the highest percentage. Students in the winning dorm receive a prize.

The beauty of the dashboard is that it provides data-manageable data. Think for a moment about driving a car without a dashboard. How do you know your speed? How do you know how much fuel is in the tank? How do you know how many miles are on the vehicle? In effect, that's what the fire service and society have been doing with buildings forever. Today we have the technology to manage a building-specifically a fire station.

Chart the Course

One beauty of the dashboard is its ability to provide graphs that chart utility usage over a period of time. At last year's Annual F.I.E.R.O. Fire Station Symposium, Keith Pehl with Optima Engineering gave a presentation about building dashboards. He referenced an example of a building with a dashboard that indicated the air-conditioning had started to come on at night when the building was not occupied. This was during the winter months when the outside temperatures were below freezing. An investigation revealed that new information technology equipment had been installed in the building, and the venting system to release the heat was shut down when the building was not occupied. The problem was remedied, and the utility costs for the building returned back to a lower level. Without the building dashboard, the higher

By Richard Marinucci

As I begin to write this article attempting to predict the future, the federal government is shut down because of elected officials' inability to reach agreement on a budget. Regardless of your political affiliation, you are probably disgusted over this major issue. A prognosticator probably could have predicted this a few months ago. Yet this relatively recent development will have a huge effect on the economy and will impact recovery. This demonstrates how some actions that are out of most people's control make it very difficult to see too far in the future.

Improvement Continues

In spite of our elected officials' current action in Washington, D.C., the economy is improving, and indications are that this should continue for the foreseeable future. Based on this belief, organizations should anticipate what is coming and plan accordingly. Some believe that government lags behind the private sector in the economic realm. As many indicators point to better times in the private sector, it would seem that governments should be following shortly.

The recent recession's severity has created a new normal for many fire departments. This has affected service levels-some to the point that operations have changed significantly. One should not assume that an organization will automatically return to prerecession levels. In many cases, the actions taken changed the culture and structure, meaning it is no longer business as usual. Departments were forced to change, and some things clearly have had a negative impact on the ability to deliver service.

Staffing Levels

Organizations have changed staffing, training, apparatus and equipment acquisition, and prevention. The coming year will see efforts to begin restoring programs that had been greatly reduced or eliminated. Those in the profession know that a continuation of inadequacy will ultimately lead to poor service, even if nothing tragic has happened in the short term. The fire service is now challenged to change the discussion from economic survival to fire departments' needs to improve quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Staffing across the board has been reduced-in career, combination, and volunteer organizations. Many departments have used SAFER grants to supplement staffing and keep from getting to levels that would make them unable to function. These grants will end for many departments in the coming year. Local funds will be used to maintain staffing, or service levels will again be reduced. The leadership in these organizations must have a plan for maintaining or increasing staffing to the levels needed to provide service that truly makes a difference. This will most likely be a combination of an improving economy that increases the tax base and a request from taxpayers for more money to fund minimal levels.

One of the biggest challenges will be convincing policymakers that they need to return to investing in their labor force if they want to provide bare minimum levels of service. Unfortunately some people now believe that the reductions forced by the economic downturn proved that many organizations were overstaffed. Fire departments need to develop a strategy to reverse this thinking.

Investment

Many fire departments postponed making capital investments to save money and possibly protect personnel from layoffs. The fallout from this is that organizations are past due on replacing apparatus, protective clothing, self-contained breathing apparatus, and other vital equipment. Some departments have been fortunate in that they received federal grants to help with these purchases. That is a good thing. Yet those who have not been successful with grants are now in a position where their apparatus are approaching or are beyond their life expectancy or are becoming more unreliable every day. One thing to consider if you have not been in the market f

By Christian P. Koop

History, as many of us have learned, has a way of repeating itself-even when it comes to emergency response vehicle (ERV) maintenance and repair. What prompted me to go ahead and put pen to paper, as the saying goes, was a phone call I received from one of our vendors a few months back. The caller explained a problem he was encountering with a new rescue truck his dealership had recently sold but which was brought back with a complaint that during hard braking it pulled to one side. The dealer was having difficulty getting the problem diagnosed correctly. I quickly remembered and explained to him what the problem might be based on a similar symptom our shop had encountered 20 years earlier. It turns out it was the same problem. And, sharing this information proved valuable in getting the problem resolved sooner with fewer headaches for all involved.

Common Problems

For quite some time now I have felt the need to compile the major fleet problems or defects I have seen and experienced with ERVs over the years. By major, I am referring to those problems that affect a specific group of vehicles or are common fleetwide. Some of these issues might have been created by technical specifications that did not take into account real-world drive cycles, terrain, climate, vehicle weight, and other factors that can negatively impact ERV maintenance, reliability, and durability. Others were caused by poor design or just manufacturing defects that were not discovered until the ERVs were placed in service.

Many of these fleetwide issues manifest themselves right after the vehicles are purchased and placed into service. Other problems may take many months and even thousands of miles to rear their troublesome heads. My main goal behind writing about these past issues is that I feel some of the resolutions to defects and problems I have encountered over the years could be of value to others running into similar or even the exact same issues. This could be beneficial by providing information that may ultimately help cut down the time it takes to resolve similar problems. I am sure everyone reading this realizes that time is money, especially with today's budgets, and getting the unit back in service as soon as possible is paramount to all those who are involved or affected by the problem-not to mention the taxpayers.

This article is not intended to bash manufacturers in any way for past problems. I will provide a brief history and background for each of the ERV fleet issues that I describe below to give the reader the best perspective in understanding what caused a problem and what those involved did to resolve it.

Alternator Failures

In the early 1980s, our department was using big-block gasoline-powered rescue trucks (aka ambulances) that were experiencing frequent alternator failures. Back then we were using a brush-type 165-amp alternator with internal rectification. In other words, it was an alternator with the diodes or bridge rectifiers built inside the unit as is still common today in most automotive, truck, and heavy equipment alternators. The root cause of the problem was extreme high under-hood temperatures causing the alternator diodes to die an early death. It was not because of an excessive electrical load. At the time, a gentleman out of Tampa, Florida-Whitley, if I recall correctly-began producing an external bridge rectifier to address the problem. Removing the stock bridge rectifiers from the excessive heat found inside the alternator and relocating them behind the grill area to receive cooler airflow resolved the problem.

Afterward, the shop modified the rest of the fleet, and alternator life was restored to acceptable levels. One very important point is that excessive heat is an enemy of charging systems, batteries, and electronic components. We went through this same ordeal just a few years ago when the wrong altern

By Paul C. Darley,
President and CEO, W.S. Darley & Company

In the movie "Money Ball," Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane uses statistical information to create a winning baseball team. You can do the same with your fire department, company, or just about any organization.

"Where is the fire industry headed?" and "When will it turn around?" are the two most common questions I hear from those in the fire industry trying to navigate through these difficult times. No one knows for sure, but there are a lot of industry data we can use to help answer these challenging questions.

Data-Driven Decisions

I've always been a believer in data-driven decisions. When it comes to figuring where this industry is headed, I turn to sources such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the National League of Cities (NLC), the National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), and the Fire Apparatus Manufacturers' Association (FAMA)-just to name a few. Each organization collects data that it shares with the public and its membership.

Here are a few highlights of the data published from these different organizations.

The NFPA has an excellent research section on its Web site. One of the best reports is the Annual Fire Loss Report published each year in September. It is filled with more statistics than you can ever absorb, but high-level trends certainly emerge. For example, there were 1.375 million fires and 2,855 fire-related deaths in 2012. This was down one percent from the previous year and down more than 55 percent compared to 1977, when there were 3.3 million fires and 7,400 deaths. Fires accounted for only four percent of the 31.8 million calls in 2012, while 68 percent were EMS calls.

The search feature of the IAFC's Web site is great, and there are more articles on fire industry statistics than you can imagine. I encourage you to go to its Web site and type in the words "Fire Stats." You'll be hit with 2,500 records ranked by relevance. You can quickly narrow this down through a refined search on the topic of your choice.

The NLC publishes the single best annual report for determining the future health of America's cities, the "Research Brief on America's Cities." The 2013 report, released in mid-October, covers survey results from cities with populations ranging from 10,000 to three million residents. This report covers everything from building permit reports to spending activities. City finance officers report that they are now better able to meet their financial needs than at any time since 2007. This extremely favorable news is based on increased revenues and cuts in services. The report also addresses the 18- to 24-month lag between the general economy and municipal budgets.

The NVFC's Web site has a section devoted entirely to statistics. There are 756,450 volunteer firefighters in the United States comprising 69 percent of the nation's fire service. Of the 30,145 departments in the country, 20,200 are all volunteer, 5,530 are mostly volunteer, 1,865 are mostly career, and 2,550 are all career. The number of volunteer firefighters in the United States has declined by more than 18 percent since 1984. Major factors contributing to the decline include increased time demands and less focus on volunteering-this at a time when the average age of volunteers is increasing significantly.

The FAMA Web site also has some great tools, such as a weight and cube calculator to determine how much equipment can fit on your new truck. All United States fire apparatus manufacturers submit statistics on the number of new vehicle orders and those shipped each quarter. This detailed report is only for members, but the FAMA board has given me permission to share the following:

New orders for fire apparatus have increased recently. In