Background

The Fire Department of the City of New York serves all five boroughs through a workforce of more than 17,000 employees, including approximately 11,000 firefighters and fire officers, 4,500 EMTs, paramedics and EMS officers, and 2,000 civilian employees. Across 218 firehouses and 39 EMS stations, FDNY responds to more than 1.9 million incidents annually on average.

Challenge

FDNY needed to replace an incident-reporting product that generated persistent complaints and made adjustments costly. The transition also had to prepare the department for the new national incident reporting standard while bridging the gap between field operations and technology decision-makers. At FDNY scale, any new system had to be intuitive enough for rapid adoption and flexible enough to evolve with operational needs.

Solution

FDNY selected First Due for incident reporting and moved the platform into citywide use in roughly two months. Required-field prompts, configurable workflows, PDF guides, intranet resources, training videos, and an internal help desk supported adoption. First Due's implementation team brought an all-hands approach, responded quickly, and worked beyond standard hours when needed.

Results

Crews adapted quickly to a system Kristian Prior described as intuitive and straightforward. FDNY can now refine workflows as new data needs emerge, including casualty classifications, fatalities, rescues, 10-45 victim codes, and specialized operational questions. The platform gives the department a foundation for better documentation today and future expansion into responder and pre-planning capabilities.