Concord Fire Department Improves Emergency Response with PolicyTech

About this Case study

With policies and procedures for every type of emergency the department may encounter, the Concord Fire Department needed a better system for managing those documents and holding department employees accountable for knowing the content of those policies and procedures.

1. Industry:

   Government

2. Number of employees:

   51

3. Before:

   Gaps in policy and procedure management reveal need for better system.

4. After:

   Hosted policy management solution puts everyone on the same page even in an emergency.

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Challenge: A Policy Management System That Needs to Keep Up with Emergencies

In an emergency, everyone needs to be on the same page. No one knows that better than the firefighters of the Concord Fire Department in Massachusetts. With policies and procedures for every type of emergency the department may encounter, the organization needed a better system for managing those documents and holding department employees accountable for knowing the content of those policies and procedures.

In addition, the department needed to standardize its operating procedures. With four different groups at two stations “every manager, or every supervisor, or every shift commander or officer had their own basic way of running a particular call. There could have been up to eight different ways of operating at a particular emergency scene,” said Jeffrey Lex, a firefighter and IT manager at the Concord Fire Department.

Solution: PolicyTech® Puts Fire Department on the Same Page

Now with PolicyTech in place, no matter who is on duty, the department operates in the same way. “The reason we went with PolicyTech was to ensure the same message got delivered to all the members of our department,” said Lex.

Whenever a new policy comes out every employee gets an email notifying them that they need to review the policy. At a daily morning roll call, the fire department goes over new policies, policies that are up for review and documents that have been amended to make sure that every department member knows what is expected of them. “With PolicyTech in place, everybody is getting the same message and everybody is expected to follow the same guidelines. Everybody knows what their responsibilities are even when they are working with a different group that they don’t typically work with,” said Lex.

Results: Upgrading to Hosted Solution Makes Compliance Portable

PolicyTech has also made it possible for the Concord Fire Department to stay compliant on-the-go. When the department began working with the software, it used a non-hosted solution, which meant the department couldn’t access policies and procedures anywhere other than within the department. This made it challenging to keep up with policies when firefighters were responding to an emergency and needed to reference a procedure or a chain of notification.

Working with NAVEX’s Implementation team, the fire department transitioned to a hosted solution. On a recent call, firefighters needed to reference a specific chain of notification, which was stored in PolicyTech. Using a phone at the site of the emergency, they were able to look up and easily access the policy that they needed.

Lex noted that while the Concord Fire Department has always been committed to doing the right thing, PolicyTech has made it easier to standardize its operations. “There was always a strong commitment to ethics in the department before PolicyTech, but PolicyTech helped get everybody on the same page.”

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About Concord Fire Department

The mission of the Concord Fire Department is to provide rapid and effective fire, rescue, and emergency medical services to the community, and strive to make Concord a safer place for all to live, work and visit.