With seven fire stations and additional facilities spread across approximately 75 square miles, the South Adams County, CO Fire Department often felt disconnected – until they installed Dashboards by First Arriving.
It was several years ago, while the department was going through its accreditation process that communication was identified as an issue, said IT Director Kevin Kellar. That was when officials determined that the widespread use of email wasn’t sufficiently effective.
“A lot of employees felt like death by email was very prominent,” Kellar said. “And it was. Everything was getting blasted out to an all-members email group.”
While it felt like an information overload, at the same time, too much email was getting missed when it went out during firefighters’ days off.
That was when the department’s operations chief discovered First Arriving and its Dashboard solution.
“He sent the link to me, I did the quick demo, and instantly was like, 100 percent yes,” Kellar said.
The department rolled out the system within just a few weeks of discovering it, ordering one unit for each of their buildings. “And we now pipe the feed into every single office in our headquarters, every single office at our training center, we have it in every fire station – they have it in the gym, in their TV rooms, their offices where they’re doing notes… we really blast it out pretty much everywhere that we can,” Kellar said. “And the impact has been huge.”
Before, “It felt like each station was its own little silo,” Kellar said. “And now it feels like we’re all on the same page.”
One of their top impacts has come from integrating their reporting information, allowing stations to easily see and compare their statistics, Kellar said, which has helped response times. Stations also appreciate seeing calls pop up on the screen so they can quickly see when something big may be happening, and be aware of what may be coming.
As far as which feature first sold them during the demo, Kellar says it was being able to look up and see a schedule.
“I think that was number one,” he said. “We’re now on CrewSense, which works great. That was a big hit.”
The next major selling point was being able to push out overdue training assignments in TargetSolutions.
“I think the first week we got that integration live, and everyone got put on blast department-wide for training things that were overdue,” Kellar said. “That helped that issue pretty much immediately.”
And some of the greatest impacts, Kellar noted, have come from the most basic integrations, from Google Maps showing traffic times, to Power Point slides showing everything happening at the department, from upcoming events, to surveys, to instructions for how to submit new staff photos. They sometimes even post QR codes for staff to scan to get more information on their phones.
“Little things like that have been huge,” Kellar said. The weather screen has been another major help, he added, particularly in tracking wildfire risks in Colorado as wind and other conditions change throughout the day.
“Like on a ‘red flag’ day, we staff an extra brush truck,” Kellar said. “That’s one of those things that if you don’t get an automated email or know to check, it’s easy to slip by.” Blizzard and other warnings have been beneficial as well, he added. “That stuff helps us adjust our response proactively so we can be better suited for the upcoming weather conditions.”
As when implementing any new system, getting the full department on board took some time and training, but not much, Kellar said. As IT director, he explained to staff that he would maintain the system, but couldn’t be responsible for building all the content.
Initially that created a little more work for others, but once they got used to the system, it became simple, he said.
“We don’t even have to tell people now. Any time we have a division that has an event, or anything coming up, they just jump right into the Google slides, pop a little slide up real quick, and then that’s blasted out to everyone pretty much instantly.”
The improvement has been evident in not only workplace efficiency, but in strengthening the bond across staff and stations, Kellar added. The use of email has dropped to about one per week, and everything now goes up – and gets noticed – on the dashboards, from department news, to peer fitness team workouts, to workplace anniversaries, to staff birth announcements, and more.
“Those big events are all blasted it out, so it makes us feel much more like a family,” Kellar said.
For any fire departments considering Dashboards by First Arriving, Kellar recommends feeding them into as many locations as possible throughout their facilities, and reaching out to First Arriving with any questions.
“It’s been super easy to get help or modify any of our integrations, and it’s always super simple to work with your support team.”
