In 2003, faced with a significant budget shortfall, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS) identified a way to make more efficient use of resources, by matching the availability of its people to the demand and risk profile of the community. In order to achieve flexible deployment of resources, it was necessary to introduce much more flexibility into employment contracts and duty systems. Research had identified best practice in the private retail sector. This research was utilised when developing rostering for duty and flexible operational resource deployment (FORD).
The Fire and Rescue Authority (FRA) was consulted at the very early stages of strategy development and supported the Chief Fire Officer (CFO) and Chief Executive throughout the implementation. In addition, Fire Brigade Union officials worked with the management team to secure benefits for their members through constructive negotiations.
Rostering for duty has delivered approximately £1.2 million of annual efficiency savings and improved performance standards (the number of firefighters on fire engines attending incidents). The initial phase of FORD generated a further £1.7 million of annual efficiency; extending FORD in a second phase has increased total annual savings to over £3 million per year.
Rostering for duty
In January 2006, GMFRS introduced a new duty system, incorporating significant changes in working practice, for all wholetime operational staff. There is now a wide range of flexible duty patterns enabling a better match of firefighter availability to risk and demand. It has introduced a five-watch system, which requires 87 fewer firefighters (out of a total of nearly 1,800 wholetime operational personnel) to provide existing levels of cover.
The usual wholetime pattern now has each firefighter carrying out a tour of duty every eight days. A tour of duty involves two day shifts consisting of nine hours each and two night shifts consisting of 15 hours each. After seven tours of duty a firefighter has a break of 18 days before returning to work. These fixed shifts are only part of the firefighter shift pattern and a number of flexible shifts are also included, involving on average 340 hours of the yearly total.
Rostering for duty is constantly reviewed to ensure continuous improvement and refinement and to take account of the concerns of staff. The roster planning cycle will be aligned with the financial year rather than the calendar year. A new overtime policy involving volunteers for pre-arranged overtime has recently been introduced on a trial basis, as there have been some challenges meeting the variation in demand placed on the system caused by employee absences (due to floating leave, sickness, training and so on) and overtime is the best method for addressing some of these occasional shortages.
The new flexible way of deploying staff allowed GMFRS to introduce FORD.
Flexible operational resource deployment
The flexibility of the new shift arrangements has enabled GMFRS to take five appliances off the run at night from stations across its service area. Four appliances are stood down from 17 of GMFRS’s 23 two-pump stations each night on a rotating basis according to risk. The selection of the pumps concerned involved combining results from analysis using standard fire service risk modelling software and other specialist software on workload patterns. The two-pump stations in the highest risk and highest workload areas are excluded from the rotation. A further appliance is taken off the run every night from the least busy single-pump station in GMFRS’s area. Cover for the five pumps taken off the run is provided from neighbouring stations.
From April 2008 FORD was extended to include other less busy daytime periods, such as weekends and bank holidays.
Service delivery and attendance times have not been adversely affected, while the equivalent of 36 firefighter posts has been released for other activities.