[Post by K.M. Lowe, Writer & Corporate Communicator]
This year’s hot temperatures and droughts in some areas have resulted in record forest fires across North America. Fighting these fires is the responsibility of state and provincial fire protection services, which are responsible for millions of hectares of land. The forests that cover much of these lands are an integral part of the way of life for many and contribute to the lumber industry, recreation and tourism, fish and wildlife habit and more.
One of these forest service agencies has been fighting fires for more than 100 years and has been using an LMS from GeoMetrix Data Systems for more than 10 of those years. This forest service has developed a formula for successful fire-fighting: find it fast, hit it hard, and attack where the need is greatest.
The organization employs hundreds of fire fighters each year. When fire crews are not on the fire line or engaged in training exercises, they participate in non-fire project work throughout their communities. Fire fighters also come to the aid of other emergency response agencies. Such activities might include filling sandbags for flood control or fighting fires in other areas of North America when needed. It’s all part of the job.
Fighting wildfires is dangerous and exhausting work. As the safety of fire fighters is of utmost importance, the service provides fire fighting and safety training to all employees prior to being assigned to fight wildfires.
“Physically fit and well-trained fire fighters have higher productivity, are more safety conscious and have fewer accidents.”
These fire fighters are highly efficient and cost effective because they are well trained and physically fit. The training that fire fighters receive through the agency includes:
Boot-camp training and the experience fire crews have in the field are critical. The agency uses the TrainingPartner Learning Management System from GeoMetrix to track not only the training that is given to fire fighters, but also the experience that crew members gain in the field.
The implementation of the LMS back in 2002 involved importing two sources of legacy data from two different government database systems. Greg Gammie, Implementation Services Manager at GeoMetrix explained, “To create a complete database, data had to be imported from both an HR system and a training database, combining information into new fields in the LMS. The result was the comprehensive database of training and HR information that the organization needed.”
The agency then tailored certain functionality of TrainingPartner to its specific needs by designating the ‘Programs’ inventory to track proficiency at a specific job level. “For internal reasons, the agency chose to use TrainingPartner Programs instead of the Skills or Job Roles functionality for job proficiency,” noted Gammie. “Rather than tracking a designated certification or degree, the Programs inventory contained Crew Member, Crew Leader, Incident Commander and so on. Each ‘program’ was made up of the training, skills and experience required to qualify for a specific position.”
Courses in the system were set up to define not only what training was required but also what other activities were necessary to complete the qualification for a position. One of those other activities defined using the course functionality was field experience. Every hour spent fighting a fire was tracked in the LMS. Reports were designed for compiling fire experience data on any given fire fighter. A course history could be given for each fire attended, letting the agency track this experience along with formal training. Once the fire experience was reached for a particular level, the fire fighter received credit for having completed a designated ‘fire experience’ course. For example, a required course called Fire Experience-Crew Member was added to the ‘program’ called Crew Leader.
The LMS carried out automatic updates, for example, the enrollment status for a fire experience course was automatically changed to ‘completed’ when the designated hours were entered for a crew member. Combined, the training and experience ‘courses’ made up a program that designated a job level providing the certification needed.
While this use of the Programs inventory was unique, Gammie maintained that TrainingPartner’s flexibility let many customers develop unique processes using existing functionality.
The LMS’s online interface was set up to give users different access rights depending on their classification. For example, supervisors had the ability to add fire or training information to their employees’ records over the web.
Gammie explained, “With something as time-sensitive as fire fighting, it was critical that records be updated the minute an employee received new skills. If you took training at a remote station, it had to be in the LMS that day in case a fire broke out the next day and your services were needed. So the Online interface was used to immediately update records. Now, knowing what skills someone has acquired instantly is normal. In 2002 it was a new concept, but TrainingPartner did it.”
Essentially, the TrainingPartner Online interface was used as an online administration tool well before such things were available. “Of course, now all our products offer online administration. Back then that was new, but they figured out how to make it work for their needs,” noted Gammie.
After 10 years, the agency continues to use TrainingPartner, and GeoMetrix is proud to have worked with this organization for so long to help ensure that fire fighters have the training and experience they need to do their jobs and keep safe.
