Fire department business plan development and implementation

Fire Department Business Plan

The Honolulu Fire Department developed a master strategic plan aimed at reviewing "how the Honolulu Fire Department does business"

Other than the evaluation of the business segment for the department, the plan was also aimed at providing a strategic framework for future actions and development and a clear strategic approach for medium and long-term.

The plan begins with a detailed description of how the information was gathered and who contributed to its development. Several methods were used, including some that encouraged a collective and cooperative approach. The executive staff retreat and the battalion chief workshop are good examples in this sense. At the same time, it is important to note that this is an approach that is proposed and promoted on all levels of the organization: other than executive management input, input from regular firefighters was also requested and they participated with such input in a meeting with the executive staff, as well as through their captains.

The strategic business plan includes from the very beginning two essential elements in such a plan: a mission statement and a vision statement. Both the mission and vision statements share a common strategic objective: providing the best and most efficient services to the community. The statements also identify the manner in which this can be achieved: adopting technologies able to make the approach more effective, developing training and educational programs for the community and the firefighters, maintaining equipment and ensuring this is the best performing type. At the same time, the business plan also proposes ways and goals regarding the alignment of the department's policies and approach with the general goals and objectives embraced by the City of Honolulu.

The body of the business plan is an in-depth analysis of the goals and objectives that the department proposes for its activity in the period from 2008 to 2012. These are grouped into ten strategic priorities and include sections such as governance (both internal governance, such as the adoption of manuals of internal procedure, and external, such as compliance with existing state and federal legislation), human resources (recruiting and selection processes, developing new personnel, training and motivation) and essential resources (economic, technological etc.), as well as financial and physical resources. The second part of the report details some of the accomplishments that have been completed, as well as a detailed list and presentation of ongoing projects in each of the mentioned categories.

In the analysis of the report, one should first of all emphasize that this is not a traditional business plan, but rather a strategic plan, one that analyzes the activity of the entity, proposes goals for its short, medium and long-term development and details the relationship that develops between this entity and other agencies that are relevant on the market, as well as the overall presence of the department in the legislative framework of the federal government.

However, even with this disclaimer, the plan does miss out on several important elements that should have been present, while detailing too much on some of the others. First of all, the strategic plan appears to be a long list of proposes strategic or tactical objectives, with a brief evaluation of their development stage, but nothing else. A proper business plan should have limited the number of objectives that the department proposes for itself and should have discussed how these objectives can be reached.

For example, the department has set for itself a goal of pursuing federal and state grants, but there was no strategy developed as to how this is going to be undertaken. At the same time, the human resource policy, just like the financial policy, seems very vague. The department has a number of objectives, but it is difficult to analyze to which degree there are the necessary resources for these to be completed, as well as the impact that such a completion is likely to have on the activity of the department.