Tutorial Video

We have completed the first in a series of tutorial videos for FP2, our RMS software for Fire Departments.

It's recorded in HD, so if you want to watch it, it's better to use Full-Screen mode.

Keeping All the Balls in the Air

It's summer, so many of you are away on holidays and spending some much-needed time with your families. That’s what I’ll be doing next week, actually. And making sure you spend time with your family can be a bit of an issue for firefighters, volunteer and otherwise. It’s hard to balance work and family time, let alone work, volunteer work and family time.


I’ve been having trouble with that lately. This spring/summer I did a lot of travelling for work. Ontario, Alberta, Alberta again... When I was home, I felt resentful about going to the hall and not seeing my family. Our daughter is 2 now, and as an only child, she likes quite a bit of attention. Which I’m happy to give – when your kid says “Dada, you play toys with me?”, you get down on the floor and you play toys.

I felt like something had to give, so I asked my chief for a leave of absence until the fall. Turned off the pager and put down my helmet for a while.

At first it felt pretty good. I was more relaxed at home – I had been feeling like I was constantly letting something slip, either home or the department. I got through my work travel, did a little visiting… but then I hear the sirens at night.

That’s a hard thing, knowing that your friends are out working. I resisted the urge to get up and turn on the radio, but I thought about it pretty hard. My wife heard the sirens too, because she asked me the next day what my plans were. After listening to my thoughts, she told me that she thought it was an important thing to do, and that she thought I should go back to it when my leave ended.

That kind of support is huge – family tends to bear the brunt of absence for firefighting, and knowing that my wife wants me to do it, even if it means I’m not at home as much – that means a lot. Plus, I’ve had some communication from the guys and girls at the hall, asking when I’m coming back – that’s big, too.

So come the fall, I’ll be back in harness, or PPE, at least. I’m glad the department was OK with me taking the time. It means I can come back energized and feeling less conflicted about volunteering, especially knowing that my family has got my back on it. Well, my 2-year-old probably isn’t onboard… but hopefully she’ll understand when she’s a bit older.

Ingenious Software News

It’s been a while since I did a post here, but we’ve had some changes around the office that have given us a bit more time to work with, so we thought it would be a good time to revive a long-standing tradition.

It’s been a very busy year for us here at Ingenious Software. In January we started rollout of the new, improved FP2. As with any new software release, we’ve had some challenges and some delays – all of which have kept us very busy.

At this point, things are starting to stabilize. We now have around 80 clients using the new version, and the feedback has generally been very positive. We’ve made the software more flexible, easier to use and much, much more user-friendly.

We aren’t quite ready to totally throw open the doors for conversions, although we’re very close. I’m including some information here about the architecture of the new FP2 system, which you can pass on to your IT department for use in planning your conversion.

We’re not putting any hard time limits on when you need to move to the new system, but our plan is that all of you will eventually convert. We are providing this upgrade free of charge to all clients with a service contract – the rationale is that we don’t want to support 2 pieces of software.

The current “Classic” version of FP2 is still supported, and we recognize that conversion time frames will vary, so we’re allowing you to schedule when you want to convert to the new system. I’ll be announcing a “doors open” date in the late summer when everyone who wants to convert can schedule a date – but we’re taking it a bit slower for the moment.

I know that this has been a long time coming, and we’re really excited and happy that the new program is finally being used. Thanks for being patient – and if you haven’t converted yet – just a bit more is all that we ask for. We want to bring you the best possible piece of software, and we’re almost there!

How Not to do it.

Winter seems to have backed off for the time being. The snow has melted and warmer temperatures (warmer for November anyways) have returned. Which is good, because I didn’t get my leaves raked until this weekend. I was worried that I was going to have to pick up the leaves in the spring, which would not be a fun job.

At the Fire Hall, we’ve been planning out the annual Firefighter’s appreciation dinner. I think that the appreciation dinner is a really nice event. It gives us the chance to bring our families and spend some pleasant, social time together, and we get a nice meal and a feeling that our time and effort is, well, appreciated.

In the planning stages of the dinner, a vote was requested from the members of the department. After the vote was taken, the decision was overridden, and a different option was selected – the one that had been indicated as a preference before the vote.

Now, I don’t really care about the option that we choose here, but what really concerned me was that this seemed to combine the worst aspects of top-down and bottom-up decision making, pretty much guaranteeing that nobody would be happy with the result, and potentially negating the morale boost that the appreciation dinner normally provides.

As I talked about before, voting is a pretty standard method of bottom-up decision making, with all the risks and benefits involved in that method. If you put something to a vote, you’re likely to get a result that is supported by the majority of the personnel, but you have to be willing to accept the outcome. If you decide, top-down, everyone might not necessarily be happy, but there isn’t a lot of room to argue the decision.

By voting, then deciding not to accept the results of the vote, it’s pretty much guaranteed that the majority of people won’t be happy with the decision. Not only that - they’ll be less happy than if the decision had just been made behind an office door to begin with. Which is too bad, because the appreciation dinner is an event that’s supposed to bring everyone together, and now everyone will just be talking about the decision-making process.

Snow!

It’s snowing outside. I realize that for those of you in Ontario or Alberta who have already received the first dump of snow, this isn’t quite the shock as it is for me, but this is earlier and heavier than we’re used to seeing. In interior BC, we don’t tend to get much snow that stays around until mid to late November, or even mid December. Plenty of slush, sleet, rain and fog, mind you, but not big heavy flakes that stick.

That being said, I’m pretty much ready for it. My snow tires are on, the winter gear is unpacked, scrapers, sand and brushes are loaded up. The baby’s snow-suits are laid out, and my sandals and shorts are in a box for another year. I’ve got my heavy gloves and winter insoles out for my bunker gear and I even washed my balaclava (about time, too…).

So I’m set to stand by the side of the road and direct traffic - which is pretty much the general vocation of the volunteer firefighter at this time of year. That and trying not to drive off the road as you hurry to the scene of yet another car in the ditch. I’ve ranted about this before, but I think we need to stop letting “all-season” tires be sold in Canada.

OK, OK, the lower mainland and southern Vancouver Island can get away with all-seasons in, well, all seasons. But everywhere else in this blessed country of ours, they should be called “dear lord not in the winter” tires. Or maybe “I hope you like sliding” tires.

I also think that there should be 2 speed limits – summer and winter. Perhaps a magnetic sign that says “We really mean it now - seriously” that you could attach to all the speed limit signs in the winter would do the trick. In any event, the snow is here, and no telling how long it will stay. At least daylight saving time hasn’t hit yet, so we’re still mostly driving while it’s light out.

The Importance of Buy-In

I thought that this week I’d talk about the concept of buy-in, specifically as it applies to change in an organization. Human beings in general are not fond of change – we have to do things differently, think differently. Change makes us unsure of ourselves, and it makes us feel less proficient – not things that most people like.

Because change is uncomfortable, people tend to resist it, either consciously or unconsciously. This can make changing things in an organization a risky process. The stress of change can cause arguments, anger and bad feelings that persist even after the change has passed and become the “new normal”. In the worst cases, organizations can be made dysfunctional, or revert to older “comfortable” ways of doing things.

The idea of buy-in, or actively getting people to support changes, is a powerful part of change management. If people have bought into an idea or proposed change, they are much more likely to support it, speak positively about it, and put in the effort that any change requires. Attempting to make changes without at least some level of buy-in from the boots on the ground is going to be difficult at best, and impossible at worst.

As powerful and useful as the idea of buy-in is, it’s also somewhat risky, from the management perspective. It means, essentially, going to the people involved and asking them for support. Outlining the benefits and rationale for the changes is a good idea too. The risk is that you won’t receive the support you want, and you may have to put the proposed changes on hold, or cancel them altogether. Or you might just want to make a better case and try again.

Ultimately, creating the culture of communication and respect that is necessary to achieve true “buy-in” is a good thing, regardless of whether a particular change is achieved. This sort of bottom-up change can be more difficult to accomplish in the short term, but it makes the human factor of a big change more supportive. And as we all know, it’s the human side that tends to make things more difficult…

Confined Spaces

A few weeks back we went up to the fire training ground at the Selkirk College campus in Nelson. The training ground has a bunch of natural-gas powered emplacements that can be lit and used for firefighting practice. It has dumpster, wall fire, propane tank, barbeque and car fire emplacements, and it looks like they will be adding a larger bus fire location as well.

The training ground also has a simulation building, built from cargo containers. It’s full of small rooms, furniture, closets, stairwells and other fun stuff. You can build a fire in an enclosed space at the back, filling the building with smoke and heat. We had a little problem getting the fire emplacements running, so we decided to do a Search and Rescue practice run into the building.

Tommy, another Firefighter who joined the department around the same time as I did, and I geared up in our BA’s. The training officer asked if we wanted to have a look around the building, before we went in. Everybody else went inside, but I said no. We won’t get a chance to preview a real structure before we go in, so why do it in training?

After everyone got back, the training officer used a smoke bomb to fill the building, and we headed inside. I’m not claustrophobic. I’ve done SCUBA diving and caving, and I’m not bothered by blackout simulations or wearing SCBA’s. But being in a building were you can’t see anything but smoke still feels a little… close. If you were the slightest bit panicked by tight spaces, I would really not recommend this sort of thing.

Like a good Firefighter, I checked my air before going in. 1900 PSI. Crawling, we worked our way down the upper floor of the structure, checking closets, working our way through hallways and keeping one hand on the right-hand wall. I was the second man, and I know the theory here – keep one hand on the leg of the first guy, and use the fire axe handle to extend your reach and probe for obstructions or people.

Of course, the practice is a bit different. A sofa feels a lot like a person when you are poking it with the handle of an axe. And an axe in a small, confined, obscured area becomes a bit unwieldy. It’s also lots of fun to find your way around. We had a little trouble on the way back, starting down a hallway that we hadn’t come in on.

We made it back out, and it felt like we’d been in there an hour, so I checked my air again. 1400 PSI. We were inside maybe 6 or 7 minutes. It was a totally foreign experience, and I imagine that heat and crackling flames would have made it a lot more stressful. I really enjoyed myself, though. It was a mental and physical challenge, and something that very few people get to do.

It also highlighted to me how critical scenario training like this is – dangerous, unfamiliar environments are easy places to panic or make mistakes in. Hands-on training makes those experiences more familiar, and allow you to use the trained skills. I just wish we had the resources to do this more often – I’d rather have the skills and not need them, than need them and not have them.