Comments from Project Participants
Terry Allen, Fire Chief of the Cambridge Fire Department and former president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, has found some of the information developed by members of the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to be unique and tremendously useful. For example, Mr. Allen, who is a member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), is particularly impressed by the Fire Services Delivery Model*, which uniquely captures and helps explain the interrelationship or circle of inputs and outputs within a comprehensive fire protection service delivery system.

Mr. Allen, who also chaired an NFPA task force on Performance Outcomes, finds this kind of delineation so useful he has applied to the Office of the Fire Marshal, on behalf of the NFPA, for permission to use the Fire Services Delivery Model diagram and several other Project diagrams.

Deputy Fire Marshal Doug Crawford says, “One of the factors that gave impetus to the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project was the 1998 Provincial Auditor’s recommendation.” Crawford explains, “That recommendation, along with other factors like the Shaping Fire Safe Communities Program made it clear that an across-the-board project which could measure performance, assess needs, and put on record best practices was needed. Sharing this information can be beneficial to everybody involved.” Concurring, Terry Allen points out that an early finding of the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project confirms what fire departments in the province have always known: “No individual component of a department stands alone. Public education goes hand in hand with standards enforcement, and firefighting.” Other projects such as the Ontario Municipal Benchmarking Initiative have also discovered similar findings.

Bert Meunier, Chief Administrative Officer for the City of Kingston, and member of the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Steering Committee says, “It’s one thing to go through the logic process (which we all do.) It’s another to actually go into the field and collect the data, identify the best processes, develop the measures and do comparative analyses, and to do that on an ongoing basis.” He continues, “The kind of continuing and flexible project being developed here is more than a direction for public services; soon it will have to be part of everybody’s business.”

“One result of this project will be better communication between fire departments,” says John De Hooge, Deputy Fire Chief, Town of Oakville. “Generally,” he continues, “these things are in place, but the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project will allow all Ontario fire departments to discover best practices and share them.” That’s one of the reasons Lynn McCoy, Fire Chief of the Sault Ste. Marie and member of the ‘Standards and Enforcement’ Team, figured the time spent working on this project was well worth it: He has no problem advocating the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project as a tool to serve his and other communities in a better and more cost efficient way.

For further information on the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project, please visit the Web site.

We welcome your thoughts and ideas. Please contact the Office of the Fire Marshal through the project Web site.

Additional reading material about the Project is listed on the Web site.