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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, fire and emergency services have culminated a three-year process when they were approved for accreditation at a hearing with officials from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, CAFI, sharing the distinction of becoming the first in Air Education and Training Command to achieve the feat.
Alongside Lt. Col. Larry Fletcher, 82nd Training Wing Mission Support Group vice commander, Mark McBurnett, Sheppard base civil engineer, and Robert Thompson, Sheppard assistant chief of hazardous materials health and safety, and Jim Podolski, Air Force fire chief, David Mounsey, 82nd Training Wing fire chief, answered questions in front of a panel of 10 board members from the Center for Public Safety Excellence, Inc., CPSE, at the Caribe Royale Hotel and Convention Center near Orlando, Fla., March 15, 2015. Maxwell AFB, Ala., is the other AETC base to get accreditation during the day’s hearing.
"Those who choose to do this show a strong commitment of excellence," said Jim Poloske, Air Force fire chief, Tyndall AFB, Fla. "It says a lot about departments that take on the accreditation process.
According to the CPSE, accreditation is a comprehensive self-assessment and evaluation model that enables organizations to examine past, current and future service levels and internal performance with nearly 300 line items. The program further allows the department to compare them to the industry's best practices.
"I think it shows what I already know, that we are a professional department," Mounsey said. "We are always striving for the next goal. I think if you don't have goals and you strive to reach them, you become stagnant. This was certainly achievable."
The mission of the CFAI is committed to assisting and improving fire and emergency service agencies around the world in achieving organizational and professional excellence through its strategic self-assessment model and accreditation process that provide continuous quality improvement and enhancement of service delivery to the community and the world at large.
"It's our pursuit to achieve excellence though a self-assessment program," Mounsey said of the department's three-year journey.
He said the enormity of it is daunting at the beginning because they had to write a book on each of the nearly 300 inspectable items.
Sheppard employs a robust fire and emergency services section, taking care of the largest technical training base in AETC, which includes the Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training program. Annually, the Sheppard fire department responds to nearly 500 airfield incidents. Another key component for Sheppard's 1,100 responses annually is they are able to get dispatch between 17 and 19 seconds on 90 percent of the calls.
"I don't want to ever use the word 'routine'," Mounsey said. "You've got old airplanes and young pilots; anything can happen at any time."
Sheppard also has seven mutual aid agreements with the Wichita Falls surrounding area, including one in Frederick, Okla., and owns assets not available in Wichita County. Through those community partnerships, they have automatic dispatch agreements with Wichita Falls for areas surrounding the base, including the factories along I-44.
"The good thing is it's not something that we're not doing," said Rodney Ryalls, Sheppard assistant chief of fire prevention. "It was really a matter of putting what we are doing on paper, and making sure it's being carried forward to the appropriate people."
The accreditation program helps fire departments around the country, whether volunteers, combination, career, federal, or private, to determine community risk and safety needs. They also help develop community-specific standards of cover, evaluate the performance of the department and establish a method for achieving continuous organizational improvement.
The first step for any fire or rescue agency is to get registered. For three years, the registered agencies have access to the CFAI network, receive the CPSE monthly newsletter, and obtain a copy of the latest edition of the Fire and Emergency Service Self-Assessment manual. This manual is the leading resource for the self-assessment and accreditation program.
During the second step, the registered agency declares the intent for accreditation, becomes an applicant and is assigned a volunteer mentor to serve as a resource adviser.
The third step, following the in-depth self-assessment process, is for a candidate agency's completed documents to be uploaded for peer review. Upon approval of the documentation, an on-site peer assessment is conducted. The peer assessment team submits a final report and recommends the agency for accreditation.
"They come out and see if we do what we say that we do," Mounsey said. "The key point on the out brief, they said for a new agency going for accreditation, we had the fewest recommendations they had ever seen. There's a lot of hard work that goes into it. It's more than just a self-assessment program. You can't just say we do X, Y, and Z. You have to prove you do X, Y and Z."
In January 2015, a four-man assessment team, led by Jerry Nulliner, retired fire chief from Fishers, Ind., came to Sheppard for a site visit to review the paperwork against the physical fire station. During the four-day visit, Nulliner and his team gave two recommendations saying Sheppard is a very strong department with good leadership and command presence with a good support structure.
"It's a team effort just like anything else," Nulliner said, who has spent 10 years with the accreditation agency and been a part of 27 site visits around the country. "It's hard to say where Sheppard was weak."
The final step is for the accreditation candidate agency's team leader to appear before the commission during the spring or fall meetings. During the hearing, the commission grants, denies, or defers accreditation.
The panel's approval decision is valid for five years. Sheppard joins 201 fire departments, including 11 previously accredited Air Force bases. They also joined other fire departments around the country and in the DoD in successfully receiving their accreditation out of more than 35,000 fire departments.
"It brings a certain amount of credibility and professionalism to the organization," Ryalls said, who has been at the Sheppard fire department since 1995. "This will be the first department in this general region to get this accreditation."
Among the newly accredited Air Force bases, includes Offutt AFB, Neb., Tinker AFB, Okla., Eglin AFB, Fla., Joint Base Charleston, S.C. and Vandenberg AFB, Calif.
"Personally I'm excited about this. It's a feather in our cap," Mounsey said. "It's the culmination of three years of hard work."
The Sheppard fire department plans to be ready annually for the reaccreditation process in five years. The renewal will not take as much effort the second time around.
| Date Taken: | 03.18.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 03.19.2015 10:41 |
| Story ID: | 157479 |
| Location: | SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, TX, US |
| Web Views: | 69 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Sheppard fire department earns accreditation, by TSgt Mike Meares, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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