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Polk County Fire Rescue is one of the largest fire departments in the state of Florida. With 45 stations and more than 600 personnel members, the department responds to more than 83,000 calls each year. In order to provide the surrounding communities the most excellent service possible, the department looks to train and educate its members in the most effective way possible.

With such a large department and needing to meet critical training requirements, Polk County is unable to rely on old-fashioned methods for tracking employee training records. Deputy Chief of Safety and Training Mike Linkins is a 28-year veteran of the fire service who realized having members submit paperwork to document training was no longer the answer.

“Our people were doing their training, but not recording it,” said Linkins. “The numbers we were reporting were consistently lower than our expectations.”

In March of 2009, Polk County Fire Rescue turned to TargetSolutions’ easy-to-use online fire training system to enhance the entire process of tracking training. The results were tremendous, Linkins said. “When we saw how you could track training with TargetSolutions, we were astonished,” said Linkins. “The numbers went through the roof.”

In addition to tracking training records, TargetSolutions helped Polk County eliminate costly and less efficient classroom and lecture training without getting away from hands-on firefighter training. Instead, the department sends its personnel TargetSolutions’ online coursework, which ensures all of the background information and education culminates in a hands-on training session. Previously, Polk County spent hours reviewing didactic information before actually beginning hands-on drills. Now, when there are live drills and other hands-on training, there is no wasted time before starting.

“TargetSolutions allows us to pre-assign all of that information so that everyone is ready to go once we arrive on-site. It has helped us maximize the effectiveness of our hands-on training. It’s really been a morale booster for us.”

Mike Linkins, Deputy Chief of Safety and Training

A major component of the TargetSolutions platform is the fire department ISO solution, in which Polk County Fire Rescue was an instrumental part of creating. Now, the department is able to utilize the ready-made training template to track the training exactly the way ISO wants. Linkins expects utilization of TargetSolutions’ ISO tracking and reporting tools to help the department achieve a fantastic score in the training section of ISO’s next inspection.

“We set internal ISO goals for training and we report to our Battalion Chiefs on a monthly basis,” said Linkins. “This allows us to see who is on target and who is not. It has really helped us keep the organization on track.”

Polk County Fire Rescue’s dedication to service and innovation has resulted in tremendous utilization of TargetSolutions. Everyone in the organization, including non-emergency responding employees from civilian departments, uses the platform.

“We are a 100 percent TargetSolutions organization,” said Linkins. “If you are a member in any capacity, you get a TargetSolutions account.”

About TargetSolutions
TargetSolutions delivers cutting-edge software applications, engaging online training courses and world-class customer service. The company was founded in 1999 and today there are more than 2,000 organizations across the country using TargetSolutions’ innovative technology to solve their training challenges.

Earlier this year, TargetSolutions released the Auto Renewal for Credentials enhancement, which included several enhancements that make the application even more versatile for tracking firefighter training.

Platform managers can now utilize several additional filtering options that adjust how credentials are viewed by users. They can make credentials viewable from their users’ My Credentials page, eliminating unnecessary clutter on the home page, or they can have it show or be pinned on the home page.

Other enhancements include the ability to allow users to edit within an assigned credential. Previously, it had been an “all-or-nothing” feature, but now platform managers can enable users to individually edit items, including start and expiration dates, credential numbers and add attachments. This feature is valuable to organizations looking to allow users to attach files – such as scanned driver’s licenses and EMT cards – while limiting them from making any additional edits.

At the heart of the Credentials Options page is the ability to automatically renew credentials, which was a monumental upgrade for this tool. When all required training has been completed, platform managers can choose to have a credential renew on the credential’s completion date, on its expiration date, or to not automatically renew.

The Manage Credentials application enables departments to track training in an efficient manner – including fire department ISO training hours – and is considered one of TargetSolutions’ most powerful fire department software applications.

“The entire Auto Renewal for Credentials enhancement project as a whole was huge,” said Product Manager Misty Pratt. “It was probably the most important and biggest thing we did in 2013.”

For more information on the Auto Renewal for Credentials enhancements, please click here.

Platform managers can allow their users to edit various portions of a credential, including start and expiration dates, with the Credentials Options functionality.

With the calendar winding down, you might be ramping up your department’s end-of-year firefighter training reports. With TargetSolutions’ online fire training system’s Generate Reports tool, platform managers are able to easily gather various types of data, including completions, incomplete assignments, credentials, and much more.

“Assessing yearly training activity is critical for every department,” said Client Services Manager Jennifer Antinone. “These reports provide insight into what types of training were completed and any areas that may need improvement. Discoveries made when analyzing the results often play a role in building the following year’s training curriculum.”

With TargetSolutions’ powerful fire department software, capturing specific information takes just a few simple clicks. Here are some of the most popular employee training records that are collected with TargetSolutions’ powerful records and information management system:

Aggregate Completions: This report gives platform managers the total number of training hours that were completed by the department’s personnel.

Credential Summary: Popular with the ISO tracking solution, among other credentials, this report delivers a snapshot of users’ overall training compliance with assigned credentials.

Aggregate Components: This report breaks down the number of courses users have completed within each component (e.g., airway, forcible entry, ladders, etc.)

Completions: Every online training course completed by a department’s personnel can be found here. This report also displays the test score that each user received after completing the course.

The days of spending hours manually tracking down information to run reports are history with TargetSolutions’ online fire training system. In a few short minutes detailed reports can be built that will determine how many training hours your department compiled this year, which standards were met, and how many members became certified (or recertified) for particular credentials. Once the report begins automation, your part is finished as the computer-based training system will generate the comprehensive report.

“This year we focused on optimizing our reports and making sure they run in a timely manner,” said Software Engineer Manager Dustyn Borghi. “With all the information TargetSolutions contains for our users, we want to make sure the power is in their hands to retrieve that information when and how they want it.

“Being able to track and maintain training records, certifications, personal information, etc., is great. We take pride in the amount of things that can be done through our platform. But having the ability to abstract that information within a report is truly what brings great value to our clients.”

With TargetSolutions’ Generate Reports application, platform managers can run detailed spreadsheets on their personnel’s completed assignments, incomplete assignments, credentials, and much more.

About TargetSolutions

TargetSolutions delivers cutting-edge software applications, engaging online training courses and world-class customer service. The company was founded in 1999 and today there are more than 2,000 organizations across the country using TargetSolutions’ innovative technology to solve their training needs.

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department looks to TargetSolutions to help track personnel’s ISO training hours.

Like most clients, Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department originally signed up with TargetSolutions for online EMS recertification training. The only difference is Jacksonville was quicker to the game. The forward-thinking department began using TargetSolutions’ innovative online fire training technology in 2003 because it saw an easier, more efficient way for achieving compliance.

As one of the longest-tenured clients, Jacksonville has watched TargetSolutions’ online fire training course catalog swell to more than 160 hours of continuing education for online EMS recertification training and paramedic training. That valuable training is a huge benefit for any metro department looking to ensure personnel meet mandated training requirements.

Equally valuable, however, are TargetSolutions’ recordkeeping applications for fire department training – which Jacksonville wasn’t fully capitalizing on until more recently. According to Battalion Chief Billy Roland, it took an ISO inspection in 2011 for the department to realize the power of TargetSolutions.

“We got dinged good on our field training records by ISO,” Roland said. “We were doing the training every day, but the tracking wasn’t perfect. Some of it was being tracked (outside of TargetSolutions) with paper (with the city’s legacy system). We weren’t using one source for tracking training. But ISO liked the part of training that was documented with TargetSolutions. Now that we’ve implemented TargetSolutions’ ISO tracking, when ISO returns foor another review, we shouldn’t have any issues with the required documentation.”

With its fire department ISO training records now in order, JFRD and Roland can rest confidently knowing the department’s rating will be improving. Beyond that, the department is using the web-based online fire training system to its fullest capabilities, Roland said. Anything that needs to be reported is managed through TargetSolutions.

“Everything we do related to training is documented and saved in TargetSolutions. We also use it for delivering bulletins, SOPs, announcements, etc. TargetSolutions has become the official place to find everything. It has improved our ability to reach all of our firefighters. Things that are mandated to be read can be delivered and people can be held accountable.”
Billy Roland, Battalion Chief, Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department

For a department as large as Jacksonville (1,200 emergency responders), the ability to easily deliver information to personnel is critical. TargetSolutions gives Jacksonville an agile tool for disseminating training and communicating important fire department SOGs. The fact it is readily available online 24 hours a day, seven days a week makes it even more valuable, Roland said.

“TargetSolutions is available on a smartphone, an iPad, a laptop. Everyone can access it with ease. It’s a web-based solution that is secure with a username and password, everyone can get to it online.”

Billy Roland, Battalion Chief

The ease of use doesn’t stop there. TargetSolutions simplifies the entire employee training records reporting process for departments in the state of Florida. TargetSolutions’ electronic system reports EMS recertification completions on a daily basis to CE Broker and Fire recertification completions quarterly to the Florida State Fire College. This automated technology makes things less complicated for departments in the Sunshine State.

“That is a huge factor for us,” Roland said. “TargetSolutions makes it so we don’t have to go and report. It’s all done automatically. That is one of the best things TargetSolutions does – it simplifies reporting.”

About TargetSolutions
TargetSolutions delivers cutting-edge software applications, engaging online training courses and world-class customer service. The company was founded in 1999 and today there are more than 2,000 organizations across the country using TargetSolutions’ innovative technology to solve their training needs.