Fire Prevention SOG for Records

Introduction

This Standard Operating Guideline (SOG) is a document that will be pivotal in the execution of fire prevention serviced in the division. The document is modeled for guiding how the department of fire in the division will not only be handling on-field fire response operations but will be more focused on the planning for fire incidents, prevention of the occurrence of fire incidents, and also will vehemently state the way that the department is prepared for fire incidents and all matters that concern fire in the division. The organization considers that the recording of data, storage and maintenance are essential determinants of how the department expedites its duties. Therefore, relevant recording of information concerning testing, incidents, inspection, re-inspection, and re-testing will be enhanced under this SOG. Also, critical details regarding storage and maintenance will be recorded in this SOG. This document prepares the department to meet the challenges of fire prevention going forward. 

Mission Statement

Our Mission;

1. To ensure proper preparation for fire incidents in our area of operation so to protect life to our best ability. 

2. To enhance expedited responses to fire incidents such that the division will have an amicable response to any fire incident that is reported. 

3. To collect and keep fire records in the best way possible within the required amounts of time which are articulated for each peculiar record. 

4. To ensure that all fire operations are run with due regard to the federal and state laws. 

Our Vision; 

To be the best division in fire prevention and responsiveness to fire incidents

Our Core Values;

Professionalism, honesty, efficiency, and responsiveness

Proper Recording

Proper recording is a matter that is required of any fire department. Recording forms the very backbone of the fire prevention process since it provides necessary data that is pertinent for fire prevention, incidents, and testing processes (Diamantes, 2016). The department will, therefore, hold document recording with high regard considering that it is a core process that the fire department is required to engage in. The department has identified five most important types of records inclusive of office inspection records, incident records, testing records, re-testing records, and re-inspection records. Each of the records will be done at different times and will have their own files, physically and digitally.

Office inspections records are the records that regard inspection of the standards of organizations and how such organizations are prepared for fire incidents (Diamantes, 2016). Such records will be stored under the file name IR/01 both on the physical file and on the digital file. The records of an organization will only be placed on the IR/01 file when an organization proves complete compliance with applicable codes. The incident records will be placed under the INC/01 file, and they will include the name of the place where the incident happened, the nature of the incident, culprits, and casualties among any other necessary information. The testing records will be placed under the file TI/01 file. The file will only store records of organizations whose extinguishing systems, pumps, fire protection, and alarm systems have been tested and approved. The retesting file will be under the Re-TI/01 file and will record necessary information of rectified systems which had failed before, while the Re-IR/01 file will store re-inspected and approved organizations, denoting improvements they have undertaken.

Proper Storage

The storage of the records collected by the department is so dear to the organization. The storage of the record, in this case, will be considerate of even the retrieval of the records. For the ease of retrieval in the case the records are to be required in decision-making, there will two officers designated. The two officers will however only have accesses to the physical files which will be strategically placed in a safe in the office. The department recognizes that there are many threats to the records that may be inclusive of families of apprehended people or other organizations whose systems have not been approved and thus they may need to alter the files in order to manipulate them (Cacciatore et al., 2011). The safes will be stored in a strategic room that is not accessible to any other person in the department except the designated officers and thus the physical files will be stored and retrieved in a secure manner by the two officers who will be directly answerable to the lieutenant.

The department takes efficient care of the records and hence we realize that physical documents are hard to store and retrieve. The department will, therefore, develop a system that is will be responsible for recording the physical data as backup. The data will be consequently stored on the local disks in the department as well as uploaded on cloud. The online storage will only be accessible to the database manager and the lieutenant and hence the storage of the information will therefore be not only secure but also reliable. Proper storage of the data is ensured by limiting the number of people who can access the data as well as ensuring that the data has a back-up which will be frequently updated. 

Proper Maintenance

Fire records are set to last for varying amounts of time depending on the longevity of when they are required to serve the department. Maintenance of the records, therefore, has to be done periodically until the files have lived up their purpose (Legrand et al., 2016). Under this SOG, the records will not just serve for the amount of time that they are required to serve. Every record will still be stored until the six months after the regulatory period is over. In that essential case, therefore, maintenance of the records will consequently be carried out in the following manner;

i. The field officers will collect the data from different organizations and come with the physical records.

ii. The field officers will then present the documents to one of the two designated officers who will then file the records in their labeled files. 

ii. Under the permission of one of the officers, the database manager will document every new file at the end of the week on the digital system.

 The designated officers will also be required to discard the files which are six months past their regulatory period. After that, the officers will then provide details of the records which will be then presented to the database manager for deletion from the digital system. Consequent improvements of the records will also require the authorized officers to give the new records to the database manager who will document them as they themsleves add the new documents to the physical files. To follow up on the maintenance of both the digital and physical files, the lieutenant will also be convening monthly meetings whereby he will assess the manner in which the files are managed. 

References

Cacciatore, J., Carlson, B., Michaelis, E., Klimek, B., & Steffan, S. (2011). Crisis intervention by social workers in fire departments: An innovative role for social workers. Social Work, 56(1), 81-88.

Diamantes, D. (2016). Priniciples of Fire Prevention (3rd ed., pp.188) 5 Wall Street: Jones & Barlette Learning. 

Legrand, M., McConnell, J., Fischer, H., Wolff, E. W., Preunkert, S., Arienzo, M., … & Sigl, M. (2016). Boreal fire records in Northern Hemisphere ice cores: a review. Climate of the Past, 12(10), 2033-2059.