SA Firefighter

As you are aware MFS handle all MFS Dispatch and now all SES dispatch and already some CFS.  Soon all of CFS will be handed over to MFS dispatch.

Do you think MFS should be running the show or neutral party

the sbsoloute best scenario would be for a centre manned bymembers of the public, who have a set series of SOPs by which they respond incidents, and dont step outside of these....

on top of this there would have to be a shift supervisor of some kind from each of the fire services.

none of this crap whereby commcen operators with a little bit of knowledge like to play silly buggers and fuddle with responses...

I have to stand up for MFS CRD and say out of the many hundreds of incidents I've been responded to by MFS, only a couple have been questionable...  I have enormous respect for what they do - sure someone makes a stupid mistake now and again, but that's only human.

We screw up at our incidents more than they screw up dispatching us to them.
:)

I hope you mean the SAFECOM comcen...

Would like to see all call taking and dispatch done by SAFECOM like the CFA have with VICFIRE,that way with a set of good SOPS and service guidelines things will run alot more smoothly. There would be no them and us but rather a group of dedicated call takers who are independent to the service but are still working for the government...Hope this happens would not mind a job in COMMS....

Quote from: medevac on October 22, 2006, 05:16:04 PM
the sbsoloute best scenario would be for a centre manned bymembers of the public, who have a set series of SOPs by which they respond incidents, and dont step outside of these....

on top of this there would have to be a shift supervisor of some kind from each of the fire services.

none of this crap whereby commcen operators with a little bit of knowledge like to play silly buggers and fuddle with responses...

Yeah right and have a call centre like SAPOL who only give you half of the real picture :evil:

There is already a shift supervisor at MFS and the last two ocassions we questioned their stuffups,"a trainee did that" was the response

Not to mention turning us out five minutes AFTER they already were dispatched and arrived before we even left the station :?

Where would we be if we didnt have scanners....IN THE DARK :-D   

Quote from: safirey on October 23, 2006, 08:15:09 AM
There is already a shift supervisor at MFS and the last two ocassions we questioned their stuffups,"a trainee did that" was the response

A trainee? you mean a firefighter having a break from the trucks...


the problem with MFS comms i that very few of the guys are actually full time comms operators and so the level of training isnt there...

Quote from: medevac on October 23, 2006, 08:42:18 AM

Quote from: safirey on October 23, 2006, 08:15:09 AM
There is already a shift supervisor at MFS and the last two ocassions we questioned their stuffups,"a trainee did that" was the response

A trainee? you mean a firefighter having a break from the trucks...


the problem with MFS comms i that very few of the guys are actually full time comms operators and so the level of training isnt there...

That probably explains it but the supervisors are sitting alongside them from what a S/O has told me,and he's peaved about not being responded to a house fire a while ago back in June when they were only 7 minutes away

It is still hitting the fan over that one he tells me :wink:   

I don't mind MFS Comcen doing the dispatching (this is under SACAD you're talking about I presume), but would like SOCC to also have the ability to do it.  Would be a good backup mechanism and also for occasions like where the IC/base calls SHQ on the radio and says "respond the group tanker" (for example).  SOCC would have to call MFS to do it, which is silly (and wastes time - both in response and the operator's time), SOCC should be able to do it themselves.

I think the MFS have done quite a good job untill their normal brigades are out of action. And then CFS groups and politics comes into play. it will be good when the new computer based system come into action and then most of the human side is taken out of the equation.

How about we get rid of Central Call & Despatch and go back to a Comm Centre in each Region.

Never had any troubles when this was the way.

That would be a waste of time and money

Quote from: Camo on October 23, 2006, 05:01:12 PM
How about we get rid of Central Call & Despatch and go back to a Comm Centre in each Region.

Never had any troubles when this was the way.

I agree Camo as we never had any problems with being dispatched to incidents when South East Comms was doing paging for the Lower South East area as the operators there knew the local area

Although we might wanna keep SOC as communications so SE Comms can relay info to them in the event of strike teams being needed for a fire

:wink: 

It would be a step backwards into the dark age,once we go to a fully SAFECOM cad system you will see better information flow as all call takers will have to follow a set of guildlines/sops as is the case in other state CAD centres.....Don't knock it till its given a go sure there will be a few teathing problems and these will be ironed out.remember the CAD system is only as good as the information that brigade's and groups supply when they attend information nights and fill in the paperwork.....

Quote from: fire03rescue on October 24, 2006, 07:22:59 AM
That would be a waste of time and money

Closing them and moving to Adelaide in the first place was a waste of money

so.... how many jobs to you get in the SE daily there camo?


would the call ratio warrant having staff constantly on shift to take calls? on any normal day there might not even be a job in the SE... and on the odd occasion that is is busy, regions do open to offer operational support...


goign back to regional call taking would definitely be a waste of time, effort and money...


bring on SACAD

Quote from: medevac on October 24, 2006, 09:35:20 PM
so.... how many jobs to you get in the SE daily there camo?


would the call ratio warrant having staff constantly on shift to take calls? on any normal day there might not even be a job in the SE... and on the odd occasion that is is busy, regions do open to offer operational support...


goign back to regional call taking would definitely be a waste of time, effort and money...


bring on SACAD

For you info SE Comms were the call and despatch for Ambos, CFS, MFS & SES.  On average they would despatch i reckon about 50 jobs a day?

Dont worry about me im just remembering the good times.  Bring on SACAD

I can tell you that when the CFA went from local brigades/groups and staff stations taking calls that there was and in some areas still are people who dislike the CAD system.But all in all it works well,paid staff now don't have to sit at the station and wait for the phone call instead they are out doing what firefighters do best and that is community education and inspections as well as on station drills. The volunteers no longer have to make sure that someone will answer the phone or that the radio base is manned,but above all it makes life easy once things are are done correctly.

I am not saying MFS or CFS do a bad job but to have one call and dispatch center will be great to the comunity that we serve....

Heres some ideas of where to put South East Dispatch center if its ever re-established

1.Mount Gambier Police Station
2.Region 5 Headquarters
3.Mount Gambier Forestry HQ   

Robert lets not go there..come on SAFECAD

Its all about no duplication of services, and to reestablish those centres would not be cost effective and as we know with all government departments its all about saving dollars.

I would rather see the money saved from having one call centre go towards the many subjects on here we all talk about...

Training,Appliances,PPE,Volunteer Recruitment,Promotional Material, CABA for brigades who dont have it, and upgrading stations(ones with heaters and toilets in them :lol:

I would like to see it run idependently from any service, in other words a SAFECOM centre.  This way it can be run properly with trained people just like a real call centre.  You must admit some of those telemarkters are good at what they do. scheiße they could get all the info about the fire and sell you some insurance while your on the phone in less then a minute.

MFS do the best they can but it seems their resources are limited.  So best to go independent.

Telemarketers, and call centres that take your calls are two different things...the telemarketers who ring you up & try to sell a service or a product are often good at what they do - because often how much of the service / goods they sell, determines how much pay they get!!

If you have ever tried to ring a Government department, or a Bank, Insurnace Company, or some emergency services and tried to sort something out with them....sometimes the person you speak to knows exactly what you are talking about, and is able to sort out your issue / query, while others have no idea....

My experiences with another emergency service call centre is terrible... I have had great difficulty in getting my message across, and other times, been on the receiving end of the call centre info, and it has been appalling.

So to have independent answerers in a call centre for emergency services is OK...BUT the training has to be top notch, so the services get exactly the information they need (which of course varies from service to service....!! )

Pip

Quote from: pipster on October 25, 2006, 04:30:58 PM
Telemarketers, and call centres that take your calls are two different things...the telemarketers who ring you up & try to sell a service or a product are often good at what they do - because often how much of the service / goods they sell, determines how much pay they get!!

If you have ever tried to ring a Government department, or a Bank, Insurnace Company, or some emergency services and tried to sort something out with them....sometimes the person you speak to knows exactly what you are talking about, and is able to sort out your issue / query, while others have no idea....

My experiences with another emergency service call centre is terrible... I have had great difficulty in getting my message across, and other times, been on the receiving end of the call centre info, and it has been appalling.

So to have independent answerers in a call centre for emergency services is OK...BUT the training has to be top notch, so the services get exactly the information they need (which of course varies from service to service....!! )

Pip

Dont stress Pip it was just a generalisation.  Although now i think about it telemarketers arent great listeners...They dont seem to have the word "NO" in their dictionary.

SACAD will have three dispatch centres, one for SAPOL, SAAS and CFS/MFS/SES. All the centres will be staffed by people that are not binded to a SPECIFIC agency for the CFS/MFS/SES dispatch centre. They will be employed purely as SACAD employess and this will keep it on neutral ground to achieve the fastest needed resources. I am pretty sure that each agency will have an advisor to act on certain disptach types.

So what are they going to do with staff who work in MFS comcen??? and how many staff will they have to take on to fill these positions????

Maybe put them on fire trucks to serve their community - or maybe community education - to educate their community or maybe place them in administrative positions, to research emergency service ites for the betterment of all emergency service personnel across SA

Remember each service will still have their own Comcen... they just won't have the initial call receipt & dispatch function.......

Pip

Hang on isn't the MFS adimently saying that they don't want to be involved in the politics of dispatching brigades?

Isn't this also a very good benifit of getting SACAD that the computer will take into account many variables and dispatch whoever can get the requied resources their fastest. In an ideal world we as FF's would acknowlage that our job is to protect lives and do the job. It is sad that getting more calls to your brigade name brings some benifits eg funding and being noticed. The ability to remove a large ammount of human control from the dispatch center will be good.

Quote from: pipster on October 26, 2006, 05:19:35 PM
Remember each service will still have their own Comcen... they just won't have the initial call receipt & dispatch function.......

Pip

I believe that SES will not have a fully manned Comcen 24x7, just us volunteers when the inevitable happens. Otherwise it is up to each SES Unit to run the incident operation.

Quote from: bittenyakka on October 26, 2006, 08:28:05 PM
Hang on isn't the MFS adimently saying that they don't want to be involved in the politics of dispatching brigades?

Isn't this also a very good benifit of getting SACAD that the computer will take into account many variables and dispatch whoever can get the requied resources their fastest. In an ideal world we as FF's would acknowlage that our job is to protect lives and do the job. It is sad that getting more calls to your brigade name brings some benifits eg funding and being noticed. The ability to remove a large ammount of human control from the dispatch center will be good.

If you want to talk about dispatch politics, you would hope that when SACAD comes in, the correct resources gets turned out. Tree down next to the fire station? CFS/MFS. Storm damage to a house? If life risk, CFS/MFS, if not then SES. Animal rescue? CFS/MFS. RCR? the closest RCR Resource.

Quote from: 2090 on October 27, 2006, 02:02:33 AM
If you want to talk about dispatch politics, you would hope that when SACAD comes in, the correct resources gets turned out. Tree down next to the fire station? CFS/MFS. Storm damage to a house? If life risk, CFS/MFS, if not then SES. Animal rescue? CFS/MFS. RCR? the closest RCR Resource.

This will get me a bite....but the above is stupid....the closest and best equiped resource to resolve the problem for the community....and SES will always have a role, so get use to us being around. :-P

That goes back to how the SES respond,their response times and the fact that they aern't as common as CFS. which has been discusses elsewhere

:evil: Cant wait until they move SACAD to Chain for dispatch  :evil:

Cheap labour over there these days isn't it???

Chain??

don't you mean China or India? :?

I dont think they would wanna move SACAD to China cause the operators over there would have to use an Atlas to find locations of each emergency  :lol:

yes china  :mrgreen:

*eyes where glued open at that time of morning when i posted that*

or not....it will be fire service personell in charge of the comcen with civilian call takers.

Until you have worked in a emergency CRD centre or emergency call centre wouldn't bag anyone especially sapol call centre, they do a good job with some of the idiots they have to put up with.

I'm not sure sure they do....I seem to end up with a problem with the majority of jobs I get from the call centre...as do many of my collegues....   :-(

Mind you, I feel for people who end up having to work in call centres.....many of them aren't perhpas the nicest place to have to work (or just with the idiots you ahve to deal with...)

Pip

the ideal would be calltakers from MFS and CFS working side by side in the same Comcen, helping each other and learning from each other. No way can I be happy to say bring in civilians... much better to have people with firefighting background so they know the right questions to ask, and can anticipate the needs of the firies on the ground. One firefighter / supervisor would get far too busy on an "it's-hitting-the-fan-day" to supply all the fire know-how across the board.

So has anyone other than me been inside the cfa VICFIRE call taking centre??? or does anyone have a understanding of how it works?? The caller taker takes the call and follows a flow sheet/set of SOPS gets all the information they can and passes the job to the dispatcher and your off and running..... Now most of the staff that work in VICFIRE do come from an emergency service back ground and are well aware of what must be asked and so on....would be good if both service could work from one site under the name safecom....

Ive been inside SAPOL com centre, they have actual cops working in there.

SAAS mostly don't they have outsourced to private persons and a few paramedics aren't that happy with it but they gut it out i guess.

Quote from: Ryan on October 29, 2006, 10:29:07 AM
Ive been inside SAPOL com centre, they have actual cops working in there.

SAPOL's call centre is staffed by civilians with a supervisor.SAPOL Comcen is staffed by Police Officers who dispatch the jobs via the CAD system to patrols.They have a Comms Sgt and SDO on duty also. :wink:

Quote from: 5271rescue on October 29, 2006, 10:27:43 AM
So has anyone other than me been inside the cfa VICFIRE call taking centre??? or does anyone have a understanding of how it works?? The caller taker takes the call and follows a flow sheet/set of SOPS gets all the information they can and passes the job to the dispatcher and your off and running..... Now most of the staff that work in VICFIRE do come from an emergency service back ground and are well aware of what must be asked and so on....would be good if both service could work from one site under the name safecom....

YEP, three large centres in Adelaide (could be more) & the owner of one is bidding for part of SACAD. Not sure if the outsourced call centre is part of the bid document though.

Information I heard is that whoever takes the calls will have SLA on time taken to process the call (like the outsourced Vic call centre). So this means if an operator goes on holidays, they will need to go through some re-training time before answering calls again. This is so they are efficent with the process and up to date with any changes to SOP's.

Probably wrong section but i don't get this??

13:25:03 05-11-06 MFS: RESPOND Hazmat Incident 05/11/06 13:24,91 VICTORIA ST,VICTOR HARBOR, MAP 309 P 15 ,,CNR OVAL ROAD. CONTACT VICTOR HARBOR FIRE ON TALK GROUP 195,2016 41 431*CFSRES:

I can understand the slavage unit from adelaide responding but why 431 from christie downs, wouldn't back up from local crews be a lot quicker, but i don't know the full details of the incident?????

It must be MFS area for a start, the pod from town as you said speaks for itself, 41 is the DO and I would be only guessing but 431 for either additional hazmat crew for the incident (or prolonged incident), COQ as it is MFS area, or a bit of both...


All at a guess :)

Quotewouldn't back up from local crews be a lot quicker

Do you mean local CFS crews? It could be because they wanted Hazmat operators...

if they wanted HAZMAT operators, then i would suggest that Willunga, Strathalbyn(at a stretch) and Yankalilla (which are all HAZMAT brigades) would be closer...

who cares anyway, we dont know jack about what the job even was.

Rusty, i guess having civilian call takers that are trained properly and supervised by an experienced person can't be worse than at the moment where someone could have just joined the CFS and answer the alerts phone and give life saving or life ending advise and turn out whoever they can think of off the top of their heads.

^^ i think thats why SOCC are a part of every alerts call... to prevent some of that crap.

I thought that if someone picks the phone up at the station within the first 2 rings or something it didn't go to soc???

thats true tillerman, forgot about that sorry

That is true but at our group base we have the phone ring twice then divert to a second line where SOC can still take detaile if we answer it at the station....

The alerts system sounds awfully familiar to the old fire phones when ever a brigade number was called the call was recieved by one of the volunteers and the station siren was set off at the push of a button 

The sooner that the initial CRD function is undertaken by an independent party the better. A body or group who is under a performance contract with penalty clauses etc to ensure correct performace, each and every time!

Better than the fiasco of having people who either don't want to or have to due to incopacity undertaking the initial CRD function.

Interesting SAAS and an internal review process for ever dispatch where an issue is raised and they do have mechanisms to manage the staff and ensure such occurrences don't occur again - if this was mirrored elsewehere there would be a lot of unemployed people!

Quote from: Robert34 on November 08, 2006, 07:41:12 PM
The alerts system sounds awfully familiar to the old fire phones when ever a brigade number was called the call was recieved by one of the volunteers and the station siren was set off at the push of a button 

That was the old FACU system which was replaced by ERS and then again by ALERTS.

Everyone should be advertising OOO on all letterheads,stations,websites,vehicles,stationery as of March 2006 as per SOP document relating to SLA

Thats very true SA Firey the emergency 000 number should be advertised on all forms of media but it seems people already know to call 000 if theres an emergency  :-)

What will happen when we go to the new system  and like what happend on tuesday SOCC could not handly the calls and so local groups where taking the calls and dispatching brigades????

i believe tuesday was a bit of a special case blinky.

firstly, at one point for a short period SOCC lost almost all power due to a lightning strike interfering with the building.

also, group and brigade bases were answering alerts calls before they dialled through and connected with SOCC and other participants

it is also worth noting that when the big change comes along there will probably be a fair few operators in the centre, ppl may not know but SOCC actually operates day to day with only two OCOs and can upgrade to three or four if need be.

cheers

Hope they advertiser the jobs in the paper?????