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New York City Fire Department — Enhancing the FDNY Performance and Safety Accountability System
Faculty Advisor, Joann Baney
The New York City Fire Department (FDNY) protects life and property through its fire suppression, pre-hospital medical, fire prevention, and public safety education programs. Now in its 165th year of service, the Department has more than 15,000 employees, which include approximately 11,000 firefighters and officers, 2,500 emergency medical technicians and paramedics, and 1,500 civilians performing a variety of administrative and technical functions.
The Department responds to more than 280,000 fire and non-fire related emergencies and more than 1,000,000 medical emergencies each year from approximately 250 firehouses and ambulance stations throughout the five boroughs. FDNY has an annual operating budget of nearly $1.5 billion and commits another $100 million in capital budget funds. The Department attracted international attention and praise for its heroic efforts in safely evacuating more than 25,000 persons from the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, losing 343 of its members in the process
Summary of project:
A key element of the 2007-2008 FDNY Strategic Plan is the development of an expanded and enhanced performance management and accountability. During 2007 a task force convened by Chief of Department Salvatore J. Cassano recommended the creation of three new core indicators on customer satisfaction, persons rescued, evacuated and saved, and property lost/protected. A 2007-2008 SIPA Workshop teamed assisted the FDNY to move the customer satisfaction and persons rescued indicators to the implementation stage. FNDY expects to begin reporting on those indicators in 2009.The 2009 workshop team will assist the FDNY in developing and implementing a property lost/protected indicator.
One of the most important responsibilities of any fire department is to minimize the damage fire causes to property. Many fire departments report either the dollar amount of the property destroyed in fires or the value of the property preserved through the intervention of the Fire department. They use this information to assess their effectiveness to other departments that use a similar performance indicator.
FDNY does not use this indicator because of concerns related to the accuracy, reliability and comparability of the data. At the same time, there is a very large private insurance industry that provides fire insurance to individual and corporate property owners around the world. There are also researchers, industry safety laboratories and university experts who work on this field. The Workshop group will explore best practices in the collection of information on property loss and properties protected and make recommendations that will hopefully enable FDNY to implement a property preservation indicator in 2009.