Quality Assurance System in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department - Case Study Example

Quality Assurance system in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department Name: Institution: Instructor: Course Code: Quality Assurance system in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department A quality assurance system is a management system often used by organization to strength their performances and organizational outputs. These systems include internal process that set the expectations to be met by the organization and which raises the standards of the organization in manner as to ensure that all that the organization is doing and performing is consistent to the set expectations. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department is one of the reputable fire stations in the country that has had high success rates in serving the people of Lancashire. This report assesses and appraises the quality system to be used in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department in regard to quality improvement within the organization. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department overview With its headquarters at Fulwood, the Lancashire Fire and Rescue department is one of the high performing fire departments in England whose aim is to ensure a safer Lancashire region safe from fire incidents. This department provides both rescue and fire service to more than 1.5 million Lancashire residents conducting its operations over thirty nine fire stations which are located across the Lancashire counter (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, 2012:1). The Lancashire Fire and Rescue department takes a much more integrated approach in ensuring that its service delivery to the people of Lancashire meets the highest standard quality. In doing this, it works in collaboration with various organizations in putting measure that prevent fire from in the very and start and in ensuring that various protection measures are properly installed in place so as to provide first class emergency response should it reach to that point (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, 2012:1). Serving a population that is continually growing in cultural diversity and covering an area of 3000 square miles, the range of safety risks that the department faces in its operations are rapidly changing and extensive, thereby requiring that the department be able to minimize the risks effectively, allocate resources efficiently and improve safety services optimally. In doing so, they have mainly focused preventive services, protection services that reduce any impacts of a fire disaster should it occur and quick emergency response to the any fire situation (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, 2012:1). In order for these services to be possible, it is imperative that Lancashire have a strong performing quality and Rescue. Assessing and Appraising the Quality Assurance systems used by Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department Through Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department’s integrated risk management plan, the department has been able to successfully improve the way it offers it offers its rescue and fire services to the residents of Lancashire and has greatly helped in reducing such fire incidents in these regions. The Quality Assurance system in Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department covers the scope of the planning process, review of the progress being made and finally analysis of the performance against originally set targets of the department in the planning phase (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:9-12). Notable Quality Assurance information systems used in the department in order to ensure high quality standards are adhered to in the delivery of service and in the assessment and monitoring of the quality of service that is being provided to clients include electronic incident reporting system which have replaced paper based system and have made easier the control of key operations such as call details, and appliance timing. It also minimizes the error in data entry systems enabling a much more robust process in quality check and quality assurance. This enables for a faster and quicker intervention response in case of a fire incident and in case of notable trend, a preventive intervention tactic can be employed in order to address such as issues (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk, 2010). In addition, the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service have sought to develop and increase knowledge and skills its workforce in a manner that higher quality delivery would be attained. They have done this through the implementation of a new training policy which has been designed in a manner that not only ensure that the departments staff are able to meet the highest recommendable skills and knowledge required in fire fighting but also delivers a new dimension in the department’s training program, focusing on quality assurance and delivery of services. This training program uses a system software that uses an interactive assessment platform to train and gauge the capabilities of the team, where this done through the departments intranet. The unique training experience enables effective monitoring of critical skills that are required for effective fire fighting (Shaughnessy, 2012:1) Critical Assessment of how the Strategic Intervention objectives of the department are measured and how evidential outputs ensure consistent proof of quality enhancement The strategic intervention objective of the department is to reduce risk from the community and in doing so there are a number of notable sub objectives that Lancashire Fire and Rescue Department seeks to achieve: these are a more focused prevention and protection services, and a more elaborate and ready quick response (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:9). These objectives all aim at reducing fire incidences and risks to the Lancashire community and to ensure a much safer environment. Analyzing the measures used to determine the performance of these objectives it can be noted that key measures are the level of emergency incidents reported where low levels would point to direction in achieving the objectives set, while high levels would measure inefficiency in the attainment of the objectives. Another notable measure is the level of deaths and injuries from fire or rescue efforts which would measure the competency of their quick response and preventive intervention tactics. Finally the level of damage to the property is also another key measure of the department’s objectives in ensuring reduced cases of fire through prevention, protection and quick response tactic (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011a:1). The department seeks to continually improve the above measures continually by ensuring that there are fewer emergency incidents, less damages due to fire and even reduced injured and deaths from fire incidents or other emergencies. In order to understand how it is performing and the improvements that the company has on the above mentioned intervention techniques and the measures it uses, the department mainly uses four key performance indicators. These are risk reduction measured using a number of factors such as unwanted fire signals, effective response such as the critical standards set critical fire response, use of resource efficiently such as staff training, availability of fire engine, Staff turnover rates and absence rates, and user satisfaction done through user surveys (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:11). In essence therefore, the means by which this organization measures and targets intervention improvements includes through continually training their staff to ensure they have the necessary skills for fire fighting, reducing staff absence where level of shifts that a staff can miss in a month can only be less than or equal to five, and also through ensuring that fire engines are available 99.5% of the time, with other duty system engines available 98% of the time. In addition, they have also set that the engine response time to critical incidents should not be less than 88% for the first engine and not less than 85% for the second engine with an engine noted as critical special responding at a time not less than 91.5% to the emergency. Other targets to improve intervention include reducing staff accidents by 3%; reducing casualties from accidental fires in the homes by 18% while those that are not in homes by 8%. It also seeks to improve its services of intervention through reducing unwanted fire signal by 18% and reducing deliberate fires by 31% (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011a:1). From these tactics at improving the intervention strategies, analyzing evidence of operational improvement in the company, it can be noted that in 2011, the response of first fire engine in the critical incidents was placed at 85.92% less than the targeted 88%, while the response of the second fire engine for such critical incidents was placed at 83% as compared to the set target of 85%. Though this values show a miss in target, they are an improvement from the previous year’s response rate, and this shows that the company is driving towards hitting the set targets (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:11). Analyzing staff absence in 2011, it can be noted that it was an average of 4.75 absences per month as compared to target of less than five absences (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:17). This clearly shows that employees improved in their performance. Even the employee turnover rate showed an improvement where it was lower at 0.23% than the set target of 0.25% (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk, 2010; 34). In measuring the prevention and protection, number of home safety checks for fire improved by 13.28% above the set targets. The only districts that did not meet the set targets during 2010, were Black pool which noted a deviation from the target by 1.53%, and Preston which also deviated by 3.46% (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk 2010:35) in overall though home fire safety checks improved immensely in 2011. The total accident levels that the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service staff faced thought did not meet the set target in 2011 as 70 people as compared to a target of 69 were injured in the course of duty. The level of fire engine availability also hit the set targets showing a high improvement as at 99.78% as compared to the set target of 99.5%, while user satisfaction rates also hit the target at 97.45% (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan, 2011:11). On the other hand the fatal casualties from fatal accidents though did not improve with the company failing to meet its set target and deviating from the target by 23.08% (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk 2010:14). Comparing this to the national incidences as indicated in the national performance indicator can be noted that Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service do not deviate too much from the national figures. This is especially as noted in the fatal causalities from fatal primary and secondary accidents which also did not improve at the national level (Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk 2010:4) Conclusion From the above evidence, it can be noted that while some targets were achieved and improvement in quality and service delivery attained in others there was a declining trend. In overall though the level of intervention improvements were higher, met targets offset the unmet ones by far, still enabling quality improvement in service delivery within the organization. As compared to the national level performance, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service was an average performer References Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk 2010, “Measuring Progress”. Viewed March 23, 2012, from http://www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/downloads/performance/key-performance-indicators/Measuring_Progress_0910_Q4_CFA.pdf Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan 2011, “Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan 2011-2013.” Viewed March 23, 2012, http://www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/RMP-2011-13-Fullv2.pdf Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan 2011a, “Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Risk Management Plan 2011-2013 – Overview.” Viewed March 23, 2012, from http://www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/RMP-2011-13-Plan-on-a-Page.pdf Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, 2012, “About Us: What do we do?” Retrieved from http://www.lancsfirerescue.org.uk/about/ Shaughnessy, V 2012, Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Improves Training and Monitoring of Critical Fighting Skills Using Question mark Perception. Question Mark. Accessed March 23, 2012, https://www.questionmark.com/uk/news/pressreleases/Pages/lancs_fire.aspx Read More