The Lakeland Fire Department is proud to announce that Frank Bass was promoted to the position of Fire Marshal on Friday, December 7, 2007. Frank began as a Firefighter at the Lakeland Fire Department in February of 1987 and has worked the past 13 years as a Fire Safety Inspector. As Fire Marshal, he will oversee the Fire Safety Management Division which performs plans review, inspections, fire investigations, and public education.

Frank is replacing Fire Marshal Larry Riles who retired after serving over seven years as Fire Marshal and a total of 24 years at the Lakeland Fire Department.

Some people say that numbers are everything, yet others opine that numbers get entirely too much attention, what do you think? Well, to answer that question let's have a brief look at numbers.

If you use a search engine using the word 'numbers', you'll come up with no less than 10 pages on the subject with no one page being any more useful than the preceding or following it. Somewhere in that mess you may even find a reference to the word being one of the sixty-six books of the Bible. Numbers were important in ancient times too.

The purpose here is not to visit the history of 'numbers', it's just to succinctly examine the word to see how it impacts us as life safety managers. To that end, the first fact to note is that a number, according to Wikipedia, is nothing more than an abstract idea used in counting and measuring. What does that mean, abstract? Synonyms for the word are theoretical, conceptual, and intangible.

So in other words then, numbers can pretty much mean whatever the user wants them to mean, right? Well then, what do your numbers mean? The numbers I'm talking about are the ones that we as life safety managers generate to quantify or that is to say, paint a picture of the value of our work through the various facets of the inspection process. To say that there is much debate and consternation regarding this subject, would be an understatement. And it's an understatement because as an industry, the industry doesn't quite know what the numbers mean or even should mean. Why?

Our work is all too often a "soft" or a transparent work. We're not in the public eye putting 'wet stuff on the red stuff', and neither are we starting IV's or defibrillating people on the 11 o'clock news. But when asked of the Fire Chief how many fires did you respond to, how many Code 90's did you work, how many auto v. auto's with entrapment were there last year, the Fire Chief can boldly and proudly proclaim the quantified numbers. The reason that he/she can do that is because they track that stuff as data and perhaps even more to the point, they do it because it's a performance measure from which they garner staffing, equipment and various resources to serve the public.

Asked to take on yet another aspect of service in the operations division, the chief can speak authoritatively about the needs and resources for that venture, even knowing the impact of the proposed activity against that of which they already do.

But is that the case for us in life safety management? While it may be answered in the affirmative in some places, that's hardly the case uniformly across the board. How do we know that? In 2007 a new governor and legislature took up the task of tax reform and in spite of the assurances that vital services would not be affected, where were the first cuts in the fire service? Hmm, let me see - life safety educators, school resource officers, life safety inspectors and investigators and even curtailments of peripheral activities that support our operations folks.

Now ask why? Could it be because we can't or don't quantify the value of our service to the public? How many of you felt a loss when the state did away with motor vehicle inspections? (some of you didn't even know we had that, did you?) And why did we loose it? We lost it because if for no other reason the perception was that it provided no tangible value to the public and there was evidently insufficient, if any data to the contrary. Is that the way Life Safety managers are seen?

That's very probably the case. Can we answer similar questions to those posed to the Fire Chief about operations; let's see? How many lives are saved by life safety inspectors and inspections? Don't know, no information available. How many imminent life safety code violations were cited and corrected? Don't know, no information available.

How long does it take to inspect a big box store or a convention center? Don't' know, no information available. How long does it take to conduct a plans examination? Don't know, no information available.

Aha, you say, but I do know. If you do know, what do you do with that information and how did you arrive at it?

Yes, you see it is all about numbers, abstract as they may be. Numbers like knowledge is only of value to us if we use it. In fact it has been said about knowledge; "Use it or loose it". It has also been noted that the definition of wisdom is 'knowledge applied'. That's true here too, wisdom demands that we know what the numbers are.

So what can we do? How about we start through our organization to generate and collect numbers that we CAN use. That way we don't have to wait "in the corner shaking" while the finger of budgetary cut back is pointing, hoping it overlooks us. There is likely no end to, by the very nature of numbers, the ways in which we might capture our activities. But I have an idea. Let's try this.

First consider a base content of things to track or capture. I'm inclined to think that we should track daily, monthly and annually, the following:

1. Number of occupancy classifications inspected;

2. Total square footage of the occupancy;

3. Time in and time out (including travel time);

4. Number of violations that could be categorized into 3 areas such as I, II, and III.

Category I would be things that are of the most egregious nature that put people in imminent danger; Category II would be things that are serious, but that do not rise to level I and then finally;

Category III would be reserved for everything else.

5. Number of inspections requiring at least one, if not two reinspections.

Doing this or something like that would quantify our activities and demonstrate why our work is imperative to public health, safety and welfare. Now it's not perfect, but it's a start. It can be done on a manual worksheet or electronically, but whatever, simplicity is the key.

If as a division manager therefore, I can total up my occupancies by classification and use even the most broad data base for inspections of those classifications, multiply the number of those classifications times the data-base time it takes to do them, I can project with some verifiable accuracy the number and kinds resources needed to get the job done in any given period of time. So if I decided that no commercial occupancy would be inspected less than once every two or three years, I can project that based upon numbers. Too, I can project the needs to assure that it's done once every year if that becomes the standard.

How might that be useful? It's particularly useful for validation of activities. Incredulous approaches are what the public and others have historically been subjected to. Valid projections also usurps and invalidates the concept that our measure of effectiveness and efficiency is related to the number of inspections or plans review done in a work day.

Too, think about this. Some agencies have been charged with identifying measures to generate funding in the wake of tax reform. If we have a repository of data that tells me roughly how long it takes to actually inspect a Subway, a Quizno's and like stores, I can more fairly and uniformly assess them for the "real" costs of doing the work.

This circumvents the complaints that will invariably come in the form of, "The inspector spend 15 minutes here and charged me $35.00. That's ridiculous."

Since we know all too well that both NFPA and our base manual for training inspectors, IFSTA, tells us that fewer more competent inspections are preferred to that of many less competent inspections, what challenge lies before us?

The answer - It's in the numbers, do we know ours?