West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) has committed to a clear 3 year rolling strategy focused on providing an evidence based service to our community. Through academic research we have evidenced that a 5 minute response time is critical in relation to survivability resulting in the need for 41 fire engine and 19 brigade response vehicles being available. The organisation has historically done this through having a ridership factor of 1.42 (This is 1.42 people per position on a response vehicle to enable leave, training and absence). Due to large budget reductions a different approach to staffing is required.
Historically we have had 1322 fire fighters to put these vehicles on the run over two shift patterns:
• 2 days (0800-1800), 2 nights (1800-0800), 4 days off (4 teams)
• 4 days (1000-2000), 4 days off (2 teams)
The current situation is that we have approximately 1300 fire fighters available and this figure is reducing by 7 per month due to retirements over the next 2 years (going down to approximately 1168).
Consideration needs to be given to resilience (all vehicles need to be on the run at all times) and the need to keep fire fighter movements from one station to another at a minimum.
The brief is to find the most efficient and resilient staffing arrangement to keep all vehicles available at all times in the following scenarios:
1. With no restriction on shift systems other than the European Working Directive
2. Whilst maintaining our 2/2/4 and 10/10 shift systems