Country Fire Authority Q4 results overview
CFA has transitioned to its Year Two Outcomes Framework and provided data for all measures in the year two framework. CFA recognises that there are improvements to be made to link the measured data to outcomes. The planned continuous improvement approach to mature CFA’s outcomes framework includes improving data quality and integrity, refining baselines, and setting appropriate targets where relevant to demonstrate progress towards intended outcomes. Currently, CFA uses a range of approaches to set baselines, some of which include pre-reform data, and some which have had pre-reform data excluded. CFA’s broader outcomes review and planning will consider how baselines can more accurately reflect post-reform operations and other improvement opportunities.
CFA has included 15 annual indicators in this Q4 report. CFA will release a number of new indicators in the FY 2022-23 on workforce complaints handling, training, and seasonal preparedness audit. 1
Appendix A provides a complete report of CFA Outcomes Framework data reported in Q4.
Introduction
CFA’s Year Two Outcomes Framework comprises four goals that form the basis of CFA’s outcome reporting and related measures and indicators:
- We put the community at the centre of everything we do
- We deliver programs and services that make a positive difference
- We provide a great place to volunteer and work
- We are a progressive emergency service.
This section provides insights into CFA’s progress towards these goals.
Overview of progress towards outcomes
Putting the community at the centre of everything CFA does
CFA’s goal to put the community at the centre of everything CFA does includes quarterly and annual measures on community engagement and community knowledge of fire risk.
Generally, CFA is tracking close to baselines in Q4 for indicators under this goal. CFA measures community trust in the CFA brand and trust in CFA advice and services on an annual basis. The 2022 results from the Attitudes and preparedness of households in high bushfire risk areas survey show that CFA continues to trend above 93% for community trust in the CFA brand.
CFA reported 19,355 engagements with the community in Q4. This shows that CFA continues to actively engage with the community at events, CFA community education programs, home and property visits and e-learning modules. CFA also reports that almost half of those in extreme fire risk areas are engaging with CFA but there is still more work to be done to improve engagement with communities in extreme fire risk areas.
CFA has introduced an annual indicator to measure fuel management activities across community members’ land in high fire risk areas. CFA reports that this result is tracking above baseline due to easing of COVID-19 related restrictions which has increased the availability of members to deliver planned burns. Furthermore, CFA reports improved reporting processes and weather conditions conducive to fuel management activities as supporting above baseline results.
Delivering programs and services that make a positive difference
CFA’s programs and services goal captures operational performance data including the number and containment of fires, fatalities and injuries, stock loss, and preventative intervention including smoke alarm installation.
CFA continues to report on 13 indicators for this outcome. Most indicator quarterly results met or are tracking close to baseline, however CFA reports the number of grass and scrub fires, containment of bushfires and structure fires are slightly off track and not meeting baseline.
In Q4, CFA reports a continued increased in the number of smoke alarms installed and replaced in homes and the number of fire prevention devices disseminated to vulnerable communities. CFA has also met baseline on the number of house fires, average time spent supressing structure fires and complete structure loss due to structure fires this quarter. These are positive results, however CFA is trending slightly below baseline for the percentage of structure fires contained to room of origin this quarter. Research has shown that working smoke alarms significantly reduce the risk of death from residential fires[2]. CFA reports that its evaluation of CFA’s smoke alarm installation program requires at least 36 months of service delivery data to compare with fatalities reported in households to determine impact of its smoke alarms installation program.
CFA reported a year-to-date total of 2,868 grass and scrub fires which is above YTD baseline of 2,289. CFA notes that this increase is in line with previously recorded and comparable seasonal variations. While a decrease against the baseline for grass and scrub fires was not met, CFA’s containment of grass and scrub fires to 5 hectares measure is in line with its baseline with a result of 93% of fires contained. Containment of fires to five hectares reduces the risk of damage to large areas providing good outcomes for community.
CFA has an aspirational target for zero fatalities and injuries in the Country Area of Victoria. This aspirational target was not met with CFA recording 4 fatalities this quarter and a total of 16 fire related fatalities and 49 fire related injuries this year. FSIM notes that the result is increasing year on year since FY 2020-21.
Providing a great place to volunteer and work
CFA’s great place to volunteer and work goal captures OH&S data, diversity measures, training progress and delivery against corporate requirements.
CFA is generally tracking well against baselines for this goal. However, hazard reporting continues to track significantly below the baseline. CFA has reported a delay to the release of a new hazard reporting checklist that will assist in targeting key hazards for identification and control, with an anticipated release in FY 2022-23. CFA notes that the hazard reporting checklist will primarily be used by brigades at brigade sites and will not replace, supersede, or circumvent CFA’s online hazard reporting system.
CFA’s indicators met or are tracking close to baseline on their diversity and inclusion indicators such as female participation rates, increase in volunteer members under the age of 40, and CFA participation in diversity and inclusion networks and groups.
CFA reported a significant increase in unplanned absences in Q4 due to CFA staff reporting COVID-19 related absences. CFA have also reported four WorkCover claims this quarter, which continues to trend below the five-year YTD baseline. The increase in Volunteer Compensation claims this quarter, albeit recording below YTD five-year average baseline, is reported by CFA to be due to delays in volunteer compensation claim submissions and CFA note that some of the compensation claim incidents would have occurred in Q3.
A progressive emergency service
CFA’s progressive emergency service goal captures data on timeliness of reporting and implementing audit recommendations, workplan delivery and number of after-action reviews.
CFA has improved its results in decreasing overdue audits and recommendations. CFA has undertaken work to address internal audit approaches which has resulted in the number of open internal audit items reducing from 147 to 76 (35 items or 46% of these remaining open audit items are overdue).
CFA has included a new indicator that counts the number of volunteers sitting on steering committees and project governance committees. FSIM supports CFA providing more opportunities for volunteers to have input into CFA’s policy and strategic direction as this will inform CFA’s Year 2-5 Implementation Plan objective of a volunteer workforce that feels engaged, safe and respected.
Fire Rescue Victoria Q4 Results Overview
FRV’s transition to the Year Two Outcomes Framework continues to progress. FRV continues to report on Year One Outcomes Framework performance measures and has provided 17-year two framework indicators in Q4. As noted in previous reports, FRV has not developed FY 2021-22 targets for year one framework measures as it did not plan to report on these measures beyond June 2021. FRV continues to use the FY 2020-21 targets for performance measures as noted in the data tables at Appendix B.
FRV’s existing and future performance reporting will need to be reviewed to align with the new FRV Strategic Plan 2022-2032, following its release in September 2022.
Appendix B provides a complete report of FRV outcomes framework data reported in Q4 (performance measures and outcomes measures).
Introduction
FRV continues to build its data set for reporting against its Year Two Outcomes Framework. As an interim measure, FRV continues to provide data against its Year One Outcomes Framework that reports against the three domains of community, service, and people.
FRV’s year two framework comprises three domains that form the basis of FRV’s outcome reporting and related measures and indicators. These domains are:
- Prevention and Preparedness: Victorians understand risk in their local environment and know how to prevent and prepare for emergency incidents.
- Response and Recovery: Victorians can rely on a world-class fire and rescue emergency response.
- Organisational Excellence: Victorians value FRV as a leading, progressive, and accountable fire and rescue service.
This section provides insights into FRV’s progress against its year one framework domains and towards its year two framework goals.
Overview of progress against year one framework domains
This section provides insights into FRV’s progress against its year one framework domains.
Community
FRV’s community domain captures performance data on community education programs, risk referrals, and containment of fires.
FRV continues to make progress providing fire education and risk reduction programs this quarter, exceeding the quarterly target of 80 set in FY 2020-21. With the relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions, increases in staff training to deliver programs and work to improve reporting being undertaken in Q4, FRV anticipates that results will continue to improve in FY 2022-23.
FRV continues to report below the target for containment of structure fires. As in Q3, FSIM notes that containment information is incomplete for over 700 fires within this dataset. Significant incomplete data means that this result is not a true reflection of FRV’s containment of structure fire result. FRV has reported that work has been undertaken in Q4 to deliver training on incident data reporting to reduce instances of incomplete containment information being reported.
As in Q3, FRV reported an above target result for residential and hoarding risk referrals this quarter. Hoarding and residential risk referrals enable targeted assistance and education aimed to influence and reduce the impact of fire within the community.
Service
FRV’s service domain captures data on fleet availability, response times, service level agreement status and specialist capability skills maintenance.
As noted in Q3, the finalisation of Service Level Agreements remains one of the key outstanding issues arising from the reform’s implementation. The reported figure of 88% relates to agreements in principle and not executed agreements. This is the third quarter in a row that FRV has reported a result of 88% and significant progress has not been reported since Q4 FY 2020-21. As noted in the Q3 2021-22 report, the inability to progress and finalise these agreements is having an impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery within the agencies.
As SLAs have not yet comprehensively defined each agencies’ roles and responsibilities in the delivery of some services, agencies continue to grapple with duplication, extended timeframes for approvals and lack of clarity of how services are delivered. FSIM notes the significant challenges in finalising this program of work and considers finalising SLAs to be a priority issue for both agencies as they underpin agencies’ agreement on complementary fire service delivery.
FRV’s positive fleet availability result means that firefighters can respond to emergencies with fleet that is maintained and available. Response times in general are tracking close to the FY 2020-21 target with 88% of structure fires responded within 7.7 minutes in FRV’s response area, noting that this target relates to FRV’s overall footprint, and not individual maintenance areas. FSIM notes that most (323 of 409 incidents) that missed the 7.7 benchmark responded within an additional two minutes however 25 incidents missed the benchmark by more than 5 minutes. FRV EMR response times recorded a positive result, exceeding target by 3.7% in Q4.
FRV reported a road crash rescue result of 84% which is below the FY 2020-21 target of 90%. FRV notes that key contributing factors to not meeting benchmark times for this quarter include traffic congestion, particularly for incidents that occurred on freeways and distances of over 18 km to incident.
The FRV specialist capability skills maintenance result has increased since Q3 but is below the FY 2020-21 target of 100%. As reported in Q2, FRV have experienced significant training backlogs due to COVID-19 restrictions and addressing training backlogs in EMR, trench rescue and heavy rescue specialist skills contributed to the improved results in Q4.
People
FRV’s people domain captures data on core skills maintenance, FRVSafe, staff engagement, workforce turnover, staff numbers, engagement with local government authorities (LGAs) and representation at state emergency management meetings.
FRV remains below target for core skills maintenance with 86.7% of Division A core maintenance drills scheduled and completed. Since reporting on this measure, Division B core maintenance skills data has not been reported under this measure, this could lead to a perception that Division B employees are not represented by the FRV in the same way Division A staff are. It is critical that FRV demonstrates core skill maintenance of all employees captured in this measure. FRV reports that Division B data will be reported in Q1 FY 2022-23.
FRV met the target of 100% for ‘stations and work sites visited against schedule’ in Q4. This result builds on an improved Q3 result arising from eased COVID-19 related restrictions.
FRV continues to report FRVSafe escalation issues in Q4, however FRV is tracking close to target in reviewing and closing out OH&S incident reports. FRV reports that work is being undertaken to remedy incident report escalation issues to improve results for ‘FRVSafe initial investigations within 14 days’ measure.
FRV exceeded its workforce turnover FY 2020-21 target by 1.3% for all employees, reporting that 46 corporate staff separated from the FRV in Q4 with 31 from voluntary separations and the remaining 15 were due to planned end of fixed term contracts. FRV has set a turnover target that it deems appropriate to establish a more diverse and inclusive workforce, recognising the aging workforce profile. However, over exceeding the turnover target has the potential to impact FRV business operations.
Overview of FRV progress towards year two outcomes
As noted above, FRV provided data against 17 of 30 Year Two Outcomes Framework indicators in Q4, with a number of measures informing each indicator. This section provides insights into FRV’s progress against its year two framework domains.
Domain 1: Prevention and Preparedness: Victorians understand risk in their local environment and know how to prevent and prepare for emergency incidents
Outcome: Safer homes
FRV’s safer homes outcome captures data on preventable structure fires attended by FRV and the number of homes with working smoke alarms.
FRV reports that the number and rate of residential structure fires attended by FRV remains consistent with historical trends throughout FY 2021-22. FRV also reports no noticeable deviation in preventable residential structure fire common causes and locations over the past four quarters. Residential structure fires with smoke alarms by type of residence: Hostels (Class 1b), recorded a 17% decrease in Q4 however in Q1-Q3 FY 2021-22 FRV reported 100% which is indicative of a small sample size and high regulatory compliance in the Hostel sector.
FRV report that its community education and awareness campaigns have improved community awareness of the importance of having a smoke alarm installed in the home. FRV reports that over a quarter of Victorians claim they recall media about installing a smoke alarm, and smoke alarm awareness as measured in 2021 increased over the course of a joint CFA and FRV smoke alarm awareness campaign, rising from levels recorded in 2020. FRV also report that community awareness of the importance of having multiple smoke alarms located in different rooms in the home is measuring positively. FRV notes that this outcome will be a long-term outcome and is not immediately translatable to quarter-to-quarter change in data. Programs of this nature promote behaviour change over years.
Outcome: A well-regulated built environment
FRV’s well-regulated built environment outcome captures data on preventable fires in high-risk buildings, impacts from fire due to early detection and decrease in unwanted false alarms.
Preventable fires in higher risk buildings such as offices, shops, factories, and public buildings continues to trend up in Q4. Additionally, locations with 6 or more false alarms have increased, FRV reports that the result is in line with previous years showing increases consistent with seasonal variation. FRV reports that 110,650 fire safety equipment services were undertaken within buildings in FY 2021-22 consistently undertaking between 26,000 and 30,000 services each quarter.
Outcome: Enabled, empowered and resilient communities
FRV’s enabled, empowered and resilient communities outcome currently uses the number of non-structure fire incidents attended by FRV in FRV Fire Districts according to incident type.
FRV included a new measure this quarter that counts the number of people educated by Fire Equipment Services to understand, prepare, mitigate, and respond to fire and other emergencies. In FY 2021-22, FRV reports 7,107 people have attended Emergency Management training by FES which includes participating in evacuation drills, attending presentations, seminars, and webinars.
FRV also reports an increase in EMR and rescues and other medical assistance, which may be attributed to increased demands on Victoria’s emergency medical services as a new wave of COVID-19 and seasonal influenza impacts the community.
Domain 2: Response and Recovery – Victorians can rely on a world class fire and emergency response
Outcome: A best-practice emergency response
FRV’s a best-practice emergency response outcomes captures data on preventable fire fatalities, FRV contribution to EM arrangements, and structure fire and emergency medical response times.
FRV reports 12 preventable fire fatalities in FY 2021-22. One third of properties associated with a fatality had a working smoke alarm, while half of the fatalities occurred in the bedroom. FRV also reported key factors that contributed to fatalities this quarter which include mobility issues, smoking and hoarding. FRV reports that they were not notified of hoarding risk at sites prior to the four fire fatality incidents. FRV rely on firefighter, family member and community services agencies to report properties that exhibit signs of hoarding risk. FRV acknowledges that there may be a large proportion of properties in FRV’s response area affected by hoarding that remain unknown to FRV.
Domain 3: Organisational Excellence. Victorian’s value FRV as a leading, progressive, and accountable fire and rescue service
Outcome: A diverse and inclusive organisation
FRV’s diverse and inclusive organisation outcome compares workforce turnover by men and women and measures the number and proportion of women in leadership roles.
FRV’s a diverse and inclusive organisation outcome captures FRV employment data on women in operational and leadership roles, Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander and LGBTIQ+ people, people with a disability and people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
FRV reports a consistent result compared to Q3 for measures against the indicator number of women firefighters in all ranks and leadership roles and has reported the recruitment of nine women firefighters out of 768 women applicants in FY 2021-22.
Outcomes: A data driven and innovative organisation
FRV’s data driven and innovative organisation outcome captures data on FRV’s participation in research, data analytics and evaluation to support evidence informed decision making and community and firefighter safety.
FRV notes that commentary against this outcome is limited with only one measure being reported this quarter.
Outcomes: A socially and environmentally responsible organisation and respected partner
FRV’s socially and environmentally responsible organisation and respected partner outcome currently captures data on workforce turnover by gender and age.
FRV reports workforce turnover by age and gender. This data highlights that in FY 2021-22, 86 operational employees over the age of 55 and 102 men in total departed the organisation. With an ageing and male dominated operational workforce, FRV has an opportunity to fill operational roles with a younger demographic and increase its intake of women noting FRV have a target to reach 400 women firefighters by 2025.
Footnote
1 Increase in staff satisfaction with the handling and outcomes of complaints; Increase in percentage of training courses led by volunteer trainer/ assessors; Increase in the number of joint FRV/CFA training and exercises; Increase in participation in the Seasonal Preparedness Audit
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