The ‘Outcomes and Measures’ teams include fire department representatives from
Sault Ste. Marie, Sarnia, North Bay, Kingston, Ingersoll, Severn, Mississauga,
Brampton, Dryden, Toronto, Vaughan, Clarington, Oshawa, Oakville, Clearview, and
Kapuskasing, and representatives from the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and
the OFM.
Doug Crawford, Deputy Fire Marshal and co-chair of the Project Steering
Committee, says, “If we can identify what are the best practices and share them,
we’ll move to a higher level of fire safety and be better positioned to save
more lives.” That thought reflects the views of the fire service managers who
are currently working on the performance measurement framework.
Relationship to the Fire Protection and Prevention Act, 1997
Foremost among the factors that prompted the OFM to initiate this effort was the
Fire Protection and Prevention Act, 1997, which increased the responsibility of
local fire service providers. Services with similar responsibilities to the
public, like the OPP and RCMP have already done significant work in performance
measurement, for the same reasons – to identify the effectiveness of their
services and to improve their capabilities.
A Useful Tool for Municipalities
Performance measurement and benchmarking is rapidly becoming a successful tool
for some of Ontario¹s regions and single tier municipalities in improving
essential services like water, emergency medical services, sewers, solid waste
removal and roads. Bert Meunier, Chief Administrative Officer in Kingston, says
“Under the Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative (OMBI), which began three
years ago, some municipalities have been applying measures and benchmarking to
produce some significant changes. As a result,” Meunier explains, “one
municipality looking to enter into a contract for a multi-million dollar waste
recycling facility had savings of $1.7 million.” Meunier, who also sits on the
Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project Steering Committee, says that,
last year, Ottawa used the measurement process to notably improve their
ambulance response time at no significant cost increase.
Identifying Best Practices and Improving Service
A key goal for this project is to provide fire departments with tools for
identifying the best practices for improving quality of service across the
province. Deputy Fire Marshal Crawford says, “a lot of people in communities
across Ontario are upset because they often only find out when tragedy strikes
that decisions have been made about their fire services without their
involvement. In almost all of those instances,” he explains, “had a performance
measurement process been in place, it would clearly have identified the level of
service in the community and the community would have been involved in accepting
or rejecting that level.”
Meeting a Broad Range of Needs
How does one measure different outcomes to fire emergencies in a province where
there is a diverse range of local services that meet a broad range of different
needs based on locale, community size and characteristics? As fire departments
and community leaders become fully involved in the process, they will have the
framework and tools to deal with these issues on a continuing basis, and be able
to find and share the answers. Dave Carruthers, volunteer Fire Chief of
Clearview Township (Fire Suppression Project Team) recognized the value of the
project right away. He says fire service managers have been searching a long
time for something to take to their municipal councils that says specifically,
“here are our strengths and weaknesses… this is where we need less assistance
and this is where we need more.”
Flexible Framework
The fire service measurement and benchmarking framework is being designed to be
ongoing and flexible, encouraging innovation and creativity in service delivery.
“Everybody,” says John De Hooge, Deputy Fire Chief, Town of Oakville, who is on
the project’s ‘Suppression’ Team, “is interested to know how they compare with
other practices.” Lynn MCoy, Fire Chief, Sault Ste. Marie, who is on the
‘Standards and Enforcement’ Team agrees, adding, “If we are good or bad, I want
to know how to measure that. This process gives me the opportunity to be
accountable.”
For further information on the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project,
please visit the Web site
Benchmarking.
We welcome your thoughts and ideas. Please contact the Office of the Fire
Marshal through the project Web site.
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