Fire Chief

By Anthony Piontek

Gone are the times of guaranteed budget increases, facility and equipment expenditures, and staffing allowances to fit the needs of a changing and growing working environment. Departments across the country are being asked — or required — to do more with less. As it was with many businesses in the 1980s and ’90s, fire departments are now faced with downsizing, a word thought unmentionable in the fire service until recent times.

Unlike business and industry, which tend to have positive cash flows or they don’t survive, fire departments and municipal entities are virtual money pits. Services cost money, but people rarely see the results of the expenses. Although most people are grateful at the time of service, few remember in the long-term the services they receive and the price we sometimes pay. But the demand for a high level of service is never questioned — it is expected.

When the business world was affected by the trend, it was due to a pull from ownership to cut costs and increase profitability. Shareholders demand certain percentage increases in profit, dividends, and prices as a return on their investments. For the workers who face added work and responsibility with less funding and compensation, it is a hardship. But it is the same hardship the fire service is staring in the face right now. Can the fire service be run as a business? Not completely, but there are some basic principles from the business world that can make the fire service more profitable — but your profit margin should hinge on safety and effectiveness, not the bottom line.

The residents we serve are our shareholders. Like it or not, they hold the purse-strings in their hands with their power to vote. The average person will call 911 once every 10 years, so the public will come in contact with us eventually, either first, second or third hand. Therefore, the fire service needs to impress on them the importance of its existence like no salesman ever could. If a businessman could only count on one sale every 10 or so years, he would either be bankrupt, have to sell to a lot more customers, or have to sell more kinds of goods to open his market. The last of these is known as diversification.

The fire service has diversified in the last 20 years, adding hazmat response, EMS, technical rescue, public education and building inspections, to name a few. Our “business” has grown, possibly into an uncontrollable monster. Customers have come to expect that we are outfitted and capable of fixing every emergency they may have, minor or major. Some may call this job security, and I tend to agree. The more the public depends on us, the better off we will be. But unlike business, we often do not have the time to do the required research, development and training to make these new divisions “profitable” — safe and effective.

The fire service relies on its primary work force to do R&D, and the majority of that occurs at an evolving incident. Although it works, it is much less efficient and effective and it can be extremely unsafe. Consensus standards, policies and procedures, and chief’s orders all are developed after something occurs. Although there must always be a step involving evaluation and change, the fire service must look forward to be “profitable.”

So how do we look into the future? Steal it from someone else, or listen to the ideas from within your own business. The fire service has never been good at inventing new ideas and equipment. Most of what we use and how we do things has been adapted from elsewhere, and that is unlikely to change. What can change is the attitude that only the decision-makers have enough brains to have a good idea. Bugles and brains aren’t always proportionate.

Most companies award bonuses for new ideas, products, or cost-saving/-generating plans. The fire service has no such luxury, other than an “attaboy” now and then. Positive reinforcement can be successful, but there needs to be a huge power shift in the fire service for inventiveness to become truly successful. People have to be empowered to make change, and they must be supported in their endeavors by management.

The rank-and-file members are the future of the department. The success of change hinges on members’ support of ideas. This support is easily gained when the ideas are members’ own. Successful managers in business are concerned with their people, not their processes and products. If you have and build successful people, management in any business can and will be easy.

The majority of a fire department’s budget is dedicated to staffing in the form of wages and benefits. The remaining is set aside for operating costs. In business, there are two other major items included in a budget: profit and reinvestment for growth. Fire departments have a form of reinvestment: prevention and training. The fire service doesn’t set aside the proportions for reinvestment that business does (15% to 25%), and I often wonder why that is.

Both training and prevention are expenses with values that are hard to track. How do you put a value to structures that did not burn, lives that weren’t lost, or decisions and actions that brought about these things? If we did have a concrete number, our budgets would be a lot easier to justify. We dedicate huge amounts of money to our work force, but spend a fraction to develop and assist them in attaining our goals. The average business spends thousands of dollars annually training and developing their work force. The result is motivated, dedicated, self-sufficient and profitable employees. Conversely, after a recruit has gone through initial training, very little is ever spent on additional training when you look at things proportionately. As a fire service, we must continue to educate and train our biggest liabilities — our people. The more trained and effective they are, the harder it will be for those holding the purse strings to cut your budget.

As we continue to battle to survive as the fire service of our past, full of tradition, camaraderie and sacrifice, we must also envision a new world order for the service. If the products and services are of the highest quality, people will buy them and gladly pay whatever the cost.

So are you selling a Chevy or a Cadillac?

Anthony Piontek is a 16-year veteran of the fire service and a firefighter for the Green Bay (Wis.) Fire Department. He is certified Fire Instructor II and teaches for Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Fire Protection Associates Degree Program, the state fire certification program, and is lead instructor for the rapid intervention training and acquired structure training programs. Piontek also is president and chief operations officer of Fire and Industrial Response Enterprises, through which he instructs on a variety of fire service and industrial emergency response topics throughout the country.