Rescuing Rescuers" from falling pray to poor performance using BSC

Firefighters shoulder an important responsibility of saving people from various hazardous situations

This in turn, asks for handing them over the right equipments and equipping them with requisite skill sets. In addition to these there are a number of challenges lie in their paths that are to be won-over, if a high degree of perfection is desired in their job.

To start with training firefighters is an extremely expensive exercise and it must be performed in an order. The resources that are going into the task must pay-off, when need be. Also, because the scope of job is not limited to the task of extinguishing fire rather is a wide range that comprises any situation involving saving lives, environment and property; the types of training too expands similarly. Consequently, owing to the inherent complexity of the task and the broad area of training; imparting "fruitful rehearsals" comes up as one of the major hurdles.

Another entrant in the "challenges scenario" is the need to make sure that teams of rescuers reach the place, "where" and "when" required. The fact that delay of even few seconds can play havoc to many lives, makes it an immensely important consideration when it comes to managing "firefighters" group. To successfully accomplish this, "background work and arrangements" have to be absolutely set"in place; so that no question of "unavailability" arises in the need-of-the-hour, be it equipments or personnel.

One also needs to comply by standards, set by governing authorities (like National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) in USA)"to ensure that all the guidelines are being followed, in the way prescribed.

Moreover, the areas of working of firefighters often overlap with that of other emergency providers like Law and Police departments as many a times, crime might be the reason for unfortunate happenings at the concerned place. This makes close coordination with each others" job yet another significant area to be hooked on.

Last but not the least, adopting measures to avoid health damages to the rescue team too, must be done.

With so many aspects having a bearing on the useful functioning of firefighters" department, losing track of "what is wrong", "where is it wrong" or even knowing "what is exactly going on" is an easy trap to fall into.

However, tool that can help take care of all these is the BSC (Balanced Scorecard). This concept rests on finding that putting relevant and specific indicators under useful perspectives enables a group to monitor the direction it is moving into. Further, by paying attention to the actual values of parameters, timely corrections can be done.

Some of the perspectives that can simplify the job of managing firefighters group and increasing their effectiveness are- Financial, Operations, Efficiency and Employee safety and training. Financial aspect can be gauged using KPIs- Annual budget amount, average cost per exercise, average cost per personnel and cost of equipments. Operations aspect can be measured by utilizing the KPIs such as Post-incident analysis index, number of pump trucks and ladder trucks, staff strength per station, etc. Employee safety and Trainings perspective can be obtained with metrics such as % drop in number of employees injured, number of training hours imparted, NFPA compliance ratio and number self- preservation measures. Efficiency perspective can be achieved using parameters like "average time taken in reaching the place", "% reduction in average fire extinguishing time", "Failure fraction" and "proportion of instances when the damage was kept confined to the room of origin"." ;