Thanks for taking the time to speak with us as I understand it is your busy season up there! Just to get started, I think it would help to set a baseline of where you were at before coming aboard with First Due.
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Thanks for taking the time to speak with us as I understand it is your busy season up there! Just to get started, I think it would help to set a baseline of where you were at before coming aboard with First Due.
Of course! We always make time for our vendors, whether that be our Sleigh Crafters, Reindeer for suppliers, or of course, our software providers. Our Elf Village hasn’t seen a whole lot of change in recent centuries, come to think of it we have been using the same SOPs and record keeping workflows since at least the 1500s when we moved from handwritten records to printed records.
Our operation was a mess. Before First Due, we were handling almost every aspect of our operation, save for our response technology, with written records. We have always had our proprietary routing and navigation for response - it’s the same one that Santa uses for his present delivery optimization all built on ArcGIS, and believe me when I say it is world class. However, everything else was done with good old paper and magical ink.
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What have been the biggest changes you’ve seen as you’ve come aboard with the First Due platform?
We have seen the biggest changes with the way we are handling our Pre-Planning on Target Hazards, Scheduling & Personnel and Asset Management processes, as well as how we’re conducting inspections.
In case you are unfamiliar, our response area is a major industrial center for toy production and the global headquarters for Claus Industries. This means target hazards upon target hazards – and eliminating risk posed by hazardous materials at these production facilities is priority number one. Fuel, paint and sensitive polymers, loads of batteries, waste byproducts from toy production - it can lead to a massive fire hazard that we need to be aware of at all times. With First Due, we can delineate all our hazardous materials with their NFPA codes easily and on the fly. This comes in especially handy when a production facility switches from one line to another, and we need to account for a new set of hazardous risks. The time it takes to account for the locations of electrical shutoffs, new hazmat situations, and factory layouts at toy production facilities has been reduced by an order of magnitude, eliminating a lot of wasted time for our agency. Better yet, when we are called to this facility, we have this information at our fingertips.
The time it takes to account for the locations of electrical shutoffs, new hazmat situations, and factory layouts at toy production facilities has been reduced by an order of magnitude, eliminating a lot of wasted time for our agency.
The time it takes to account for the locations of electrical shutoffs, new hazmat situations, and factory layouts at toy production facilities has been reduced by an order of magnitude, eliminating a lot of wasted time for our agency.
It’s great to hear what an impact has been made when Pre-Planning Magical Toy Production facilities. I know due to a surge in good boys and girls worldwide it has been tough to keep up with Claus Industries’ growth. How has First Due impacted your Prevention organization?
Much the same way that it has impacted our Pre-Incident Planning workflows. We used to need to conduct an inspection by constantly flipping back and forth between our code books, and then we would come back on site for a re-inspection. It would take hours, sometimes days, or even weeks to get a facility buttoned up.
When using First Due Fire Prevention, we can have access to our codes on-site, on our tablets, all while we are out conducting an inspection. Our codes are already in First Due with some pretty slick code management tools and all our occupancy-specific checklists front and center. And after, we are able to automate our re-inspection processes as well for when we come across a violation. It has saved the elves within our prevention department a massive amount of time.
And let’s say one of the Production Facility Director Elves wants to apply for a new Magical energy permit? Rather than needing to hop on a sleigh, head out there, hash out the paperwork, and submit, they just can hop into our Community Connect program and get it done instantly. That is a happy elf right there, I will tell you that much.
We’re hearing a lot of that these days. Great to see it’s making an impact. Earlier you mentioned how First Due has impacted Scheduling and Asset management. Mind going on a bit more about that?
This has been big for us. I’ll start off with the Assets side of things. So, unlike some other Fire Departments, we rely on magical reindeer with some super-sophisticated fire sleigh technology. As you might expect, it can take a whole lot to keep up with the work orders for keeping the sleighs in line and managing the reindeer. In the past this was extremely challenging – we were dropping balls left and right with sleighs out of service, reindeer not being fed on time, magical reindeer food additives being left out of their meals. These things are a huge risk to our operation.
Now, our operations have total and complete control of what is happening by the minute as far as our fire sleighs are concerned. I can see what’s going on with easy kanban style management, create fire sleigh work order on the fly and view detailed work order histories. I have solved a big problem for us by having separate asset checklists for different types of sleighs and different types of reindeer just loaded up and ready to go in First Due. It's really intuitive for my Fire Elves.
Scheduling too. For the first time in a long time I can confidently say that every elf here is on the same page. We have an easy-to-use shift board now so I can make sure I have elves staffed with different magical skills and abilities to keep us staffed to levels we need to be at. When it’s busy season here at the Pole, you know October, November and early December, it’s super easy to have elves go in to make sure their overtime is properly configured. I can see vacancies and know who is unassigned. I haven’t worried about compliance with the Fire Elf union in quite a while either, which is a big stress reliever on our organization.
I have solved a big problem for us by having separate asset checklists for different types of sleighs and different types of reindeer just loaded up and ready to go in First Due. It's really intuitive for my Fire Elves.
I have solved a big problem for us by having separate asset checklists for different types of sleighs and different types of reindeer just loaded up and ready to go in First Due. It's really intuitive for my Fire Elves.
This is great news. It seems we’re helping keep the magic going! What are your next steps to use the First Due platform to improve operations for Elf Village Fire?
We have big plans coming in after Christmas this year to look towards 2022. By this time next year, we would like to have a massive amount of elves who live here in Community Connect. This past year, we have focused a lot on our operations and at our target hazards; the mission-critical things for any magical elf village. But we want to make sure we are providing next level service for every elf here and I think Community Connect will be the way forward on that. Knowing if an elf has a magical deficiency when we arrive on scene, knowing an elderly elf may not hear our sleighs jingling when we roll up, things like that, will help my Fire Elves better serve every elf in this village, which I think is the reason we do this job in the first place.
Knowing if an elf has a magical deficiency when we arrive on scene, knowing an elderly elf may not hear our sleighs jingling when we roll up, things like that, will help my Fire Elves better serve every elf in this village, which I think is the reason we do this job in the first place.
Knowing if an elf has a magical deficiency when we arrive on scene, knowing an elderly elf may not hear our sleighs jingling when we roll up, things like that, will help my Fire Elves better serve every elf in this village, which I think is the reason we do this job in the first place.
Automatically aggregate critical information on every structure in your response area so you have pre-plans on every structure within weeks with no effort from your team.
Complete any type of inspection using intuitive and flexible checklists with full integrated pre-planning for company level inspections.
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Document fire company responses with fully scalable, NFIRS and NFORS compliant reporting system designed for ease of use by field responders. Automatic submission to state and federal regulatory bodies.
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Complete mobile response functionality enables your crew to receive notifications immediately from dispatch - status, track vehicles / personnel and route to an incident.
Schedule personnel with simple drag & drop functionality utilizing a best-of-breed scheduling platform.
Community Connect allows Residents to create a Household Life Safety Profile in minutes and empowers your agency with the marketing engine you need to get the word out and drive on-going engagement.
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Real-time insight and statistics into apparatus & equipment health, usage and compliance - seamlessly linked to First Due Scheduling, Incident Reporting & more.
