What’s the Problem with Your Department’s Policy Manual?
The policy manual has not been updated in years. It may need to be augmented, replaced, consolidated or expanded. A dated manual typically consists of paper in a three ring binder, or word docs and PDFs stored various folders buried in a hard drive. Are many policies outdated? The result is staff lacks access to written, updated guidance when needed to make proper decisions. Sound like your situation?
Thought Long and Hard about it, Now What?
Many Chiefs have thought long and hard about overhauling their manual. Multiple attempts at revising the manual have fallen flat. It’s often not clear whether the strategy to do this work is askew or the execution is poor, or both. When this happens – it makes it harder for Chiefs to decide what to do next. The lingering, incomplete project now a big headache.
Is your team stretched too thin, have the right skills, proper software and sufficient bandwidth to carry out the manual rebuild? Are they are truly committed to making it happen? If this is the case than execution is the core issue. Lets face it, you are hamstrung with hurdles you have not and can not overcome. When talking to Chiefs its common to hear this, with a clear sense of their deepening frustration.
A Course Correction is Needed
Our speciality is the creation of fire department policy manuals. Its what we do and do well. Currently, we are developing policy manuals for Fire Chiefs across the county, ranging from volunteer departments in small to mid-sized towns to professional departments in large cites. In some instances our manuals are the core documentation required for those Chiefs seeking best practices accreditation.
Why delegating the task of your policy manual to experts makes sense
policyBUILDER is truly a unique, cost effective service, offloading the manual project from you to us to design, build and maintain. Simply said – we do the grunt work – working in conjunction with you.
Building manuals requires thorough preparation and intense scrutiny of each and every policy.
We handle the time consuming work of writing, editing, reviewing, formatting and converting your policies to a cloud based, single – source manual. Understanding your requirements and addressing them is at the core of our approach. We’ve built a highly flexible hosting platform with the ability to link policies, bylaws and compliance standards. With our QR-Initiative your manual is easily accessible by scanning a QR Code label – no special app needed, keeping staff readily informed with an up-to-date manual. We even ship you the labels.
We ensure your manual remains consistently updated. You’ll never get behind again with us working for you! We have a decade of experience working with Chiefs like yourself, we figure we know a little something about fire department operations – we speak your language.
If you are struggling and frustrated, as many Chiefs are, with your outdated, in-accessable manual and think we can help you, lets talk.
Dave Rocco, CEO
Greg Pica created StationSmarts from the ground up to meet the specific information management needs of the fire industry. In his role as Product Developer, Greg enlists the latest database technologies and hardware expertise along with targeted feedback from fire industry professionals to continually enhance StationSmarts’ all-in-one records management system. Customer feedback is critical to this process. Greg believes ongoing relationships with fire chiefs are what fuel the functionality of the software. His goal is to provide fire personnel with access to mobile tools that can be used anywhere and anytime, back at the fire station or at a live event.
The ultimate utility player: a utility player is one who can play several positions competently. That’s our John. Throw a ball in the air and John will catch it and do so with aplomb. John works many business projects for us from marketing research, data base development to building elaborate data dashboards for dozens of fire departments.
Heather Vaughn has worked in an administrative, project management and customer service capacity for most of her career. Prior to joining StationSmarts, she worked with the Concord and Carlisle Fire Departments, where she gained a first-hand understanding of the fire service’s information management needs. Programming is in her DNA, so she was already thinking about ways to make the records management systems at her departments more streamlined when she was introduced to StationSmarts. She immediately understood the impact it would have on managing fire department operations.
When Judy takes charge of a project, it is evident from the outset that her expertise, coupled with her experience, will transform your manual. She’ll streamline the process to produce a completed, published document. Judy seamlessly moves from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting each and every day, keeping track of each department’s progress, addressing questions, offering guidance, reviewing tasks and providing Chiefs with encouragement. Department manuals that have been years in the making are, for the first time, truly coming together.
Dave Rocco isn’t surprised to hear StationSmarts customers say, “This is the exact program I have been looking for!” Before their product launched, he and business partner, Greg Pica worked closely with a small group of Massachusetts fire chiefs, collecting their wishlist for an effective, easy-to-access records management system. Today, the StationSmarts team continues to consult with fire personnel to perfect the design and functionality of the software. Dave plays a critical role in that effort, establishing strong relationships with area departments and meeting in person with chiefs and staff members to demonstrate StationSmarts, train new users and answer questions.