Industry Insights: Innovative Technology Helps Neighboring FDs Collaborate, Standardize Training
Editor's note: Industry Insights are sponsored blogs submitted by manufacturers and suppliers serving the fire service industry.
For many fire departments, there is no alternative. When a large fire rages or a massive emergency breaks out, first responders have little choice but to rely on personnel from bordering agencies.
That’s certainly the case in San Diego’s North County, where city lines exist, but so do tight working relationships and common goals between agencies.
“In North San Diego County, much like across the nation, most of the smaller- to medium-sized fire departments have to work with our neighbors,” said Deputy Chief Rick Vogt of the Escondido, CA Fire Department. “We are not big enough to run incidents, large incidents on our own; so if we’re going to be working together on the emergency scene, we darn well better be training together.”
Vogt and colleagues from 14 other local departments have joined forces to create the North Zone Training Group. The goal is simple: Collaborate. Communicate. And consolidate training efforts.
By working in unison, the North Zone is able to make emergency response more effective. And to streamline the training process, the group has turned to TargetSolutions, the industry’s leading online training management system.
With TargetSolutions’ Enterprise functionality, mutual aid partners like those in the North Zone are able to synchronize training activities, centralize and standardize training resources, and boost overall performance.
The innovative platform has recently been enhanced with upgraded features for creating custom content and sharing it with users in connected organizations; tracking live training sessions; scheduling group events; and sharing files from the Enterprise site to an individual agency’s site.
“TargetSolutions is a common tool we all use and that has great value for us,” said Stuart Sprung of the Oceanside, CA Fire Department, which is also part of the North Zone. “We have common procedures and guidelines and TargetSolutions provides us with the platform to speak the same language. Each city is like its own network; having a place to come together and share resources just makes sense for all of us.”
Half-way across the country in Illinois, the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System Division 19 (MABAS 19) is doing the same thing as the North Zone: Working together and leveraging TargetSolutions to streamline training management in the region.
Steve Malone of MABAS 19 spearheaded the creation of the training program that meets mandatory training requirements and is shared with surrounding departments. That program is tracked through TargetSolutions’ computer-based platform.
“We had a vision of developing a training program vs. just going out and doing training,” said Malone. “Training officers need to look at the direction they want to go and develop a true training program that is achievable. What we’re doing in our division is great because we’re standardizing things. To see the end result is rewarding and seeing how well everyone is doing is a testament to how the training program is going.”
To standardize training and achieve the type of success that Malone’s group has achieved, fire agencies can lean on powerful technology for the fire service from TargetSolutions. Whether it’s due to economic restraints or logistical issues, fire departments are forced to do more with less. The need to standardize training and leverage neighbors for more effective emergency response is a reality for today’s fire service.
“The core mission of every fire department in the U.S. is to protect the public, to prevent harm, to survive your shift, and what we are able to do when we collaborate is do that more effectively,” Vogt said. “We have to use our neighbors. We use mutual aid and automatic aid all day every day long. TargetSolutions bridges that gap between training and operations to make sure that we’re not just responding together, we’re also training together.”
If you would like more information on TargetSolutions’ Enterprise solution, please contact us today at (800) 840-8046. If you would like a watch a demo video of the platform, please click here.
