Fire and rescue operational effectiveness: the effect of alternative crewing patterns

Abstract

Decreasing demand and reduced budgets are driving changes to traditional crewing methods in the UK Fire and Rescue Service. Using an integration of two years' operational data within a novel framework, this paper assesses the impact of alternative crewing on operational effectiveness in one UK FRS. Changes in crewing patterns were implemented without substantial impact on overall operational effectiveness, but there may be a risk to wider operational resilience. The Overall Effectiveness of Fire Operations (OEFO) assessment tool can inform FRS decision making in an authentic way allowing stakeholder confidence in the outcomes, whilst being timely and not too complex or costly to evaluate. The OEFO approach is an important contribution to practice through its ability to assess public services at a time of challenging reform and demonstrates alterations can be made to crewing patterns to better match demand provided there is consideration of the potential wider impact.

Keywords:

• Overall Equipment Effectiveness
• public sector performance measures
• fire service
• emergency services
• operational effectiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

Notes

1 The host organisation has been provided with the pseudonym ‘The Counties FRS’ to protect anonymity

2 Official statistics (Home Office 2017a) report a 37% increase in fire deaths in 2017 compared to the previous year, however these figures include the 71 fatalities from the Grenfell Tower fire. Anecdotally, the UK national press and the Fire Brigades Union (The Guardian 2017; Fire Brigades Union 2017) have reported an increase in fire related fatalities, however confirmation as to whether this is a continuing trend is not possible within the time frame of this paper.

3 Citations from the host organisation’s internal documents use the assigned pseudonym for the project to protect the anonymity of The Counties FRS.

4 Reference anonymised for maintenance of The Counties FRS anonymity

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen Maher

Dr Karen Maher is an Assistant Professor in Occupational and Business Psychology at Coventry University and course director for the online MSc in Business Psychology. She is also Chair of the Organizational Psychology Special Interest Group at the British Academy of Management. She gained her PhD from the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University where she was an active part of the Centre for Service Management and the Centre for Professional Work and Society. Her research interests are focused on the relationship between employee wellbeing and organizational performance particularly in high risk occupational groups, including the emergency services.

Nicola Bateman

Dr Nicola Bateman is an Associate Professor in Operations Management at the University of Leicester, School of Business. Much of her research has been in the area of Lean and developed to her current research interests of public service operations. She has worked at Cardiff University’s Lean Enterprise Research Centre (LERC) and the Department of Trade and Industry. From LERC Nicola moved to Loughborough University’s School of Business and Economics. Nicola was a founder member of the Centre for Service Management at Loughborough University. She is an active member of the British Academy of Management and European Operations Management Association.

Raymond Randall

Dr Raymond Randall is a Senior University Teacher in Work Psychology at the Institute of Work Psychology at the University of Sheffield. He gained his PhD in Applied Psychology from the University of Nottingham and has since worked as a course leader and lecturer at several research-intensive UK Universities. He is a qualified Occupational Psychologist with over 20 years of experience of working in partnership with both private- and public-sector organizations. His research interests focus on work-related stress and well-being; organizational change; intervention process and outcome evaluation; leadership; and personnel selection and assessment.