If you were to ask fire chiefs across the country about their jobs, they might describe their responsibilities as the ultimate balancing act:
- Coordinating a range of public safety responsibilities including licensing and permitting, fire prevention, and fire prevention education.
- Managing growing regulatory burdens, while dealing with emergency response events quickly and efficiently.
- Working with outdated technology and systems that don’t provide them the data when and where they need it, while requiring usage of manually-intensive or paper-based processes.
That’s why modern fire departments increasingly are turning to technology solutions that are easy to deploy, use and maintain to streamline their most time-consuming tasks.
Smart, easy-to-use automation for fire departments
For more than a decade, Accela has worked with fire departments of all sizes to help them solve these challenges by providing a single system to manage and prioritize all fire inspections, plan reviews and permit processing.
That’s why we are excited to launch Accela’s Civic Application for Fire Prevention, a solution that delivers the features and functionality fire departments need to do their work.
To manage growing regulatory responsibilities while elevating citizen experiences, Accela Fire Prevention modernizes permit processing with a mobile solution for field inspections, a back-office solution for scheduling, access to industry-leading reporting to analyze data across fire stations, and a citizen access component to reduce complaints and confusion on the permitting process.
Here’s how Accela’s cloud-based solution enables fire departments to better serve citizens:
Get more done with an easy-to-use mobile app. We know that fire inspections often happen in between other activities, and around responding to incidents. This means the process needs to be seamless, with easy-to-navigate steps, quick access to inspection history, and sharing the results with the property owner or person in charge in real time. With Accela, inspectors can conduct inspections across assets like fire hydrants and buildings, access checklist and fire codes, all from the mobile app – with or without connectivity.
Use data to make decisions on staffing levels, identify areas of concern for lagging inspections and occupancy renewals, and allow fire department leaders to keep tabs on what’s happening at every fire station.
Modernize fire department processes. Accela makes it easier for fire departments to process applications, accept fee payments electronically and get a real-time view of where things are in the queue, just by taking outdated, paper-based process and legacy systems out of the picture.
Improve relationships with the public. Members of the public are often regulated by the fire department. Whether they are private property or business owners, they both expect 21st century services from their local agencies. Accela makes it easier for the public to interact with the fire department, with an online portal to submit occupancy and permit applications, pay renewal fees, and schedule inspections.
Protect public safety. Accela’s experience working with fire departments has made it easier for agencies across the country to feel more confident their communities are protected — getting a birds-eye view of their process can happen with the click of a button. With a better functioning fire inspection and prevention program, communities can improve their ISO ratings, and make their communities are a safer and more desirable place to live.
A better experience for your team, and your community
We’ve made it faster, simpler, and more cost-effective to get started with our Civic Application for Fire Prevention. Here’s what’s new:
- Civic Application bundles scale to fit the needs of any size fire department, and include efficient onboarding, training, and implementation, so you can be up and running rapidly.
- Options at different levels of capability from the essential features to bring your agency into the digital age, to installing our robust automation to remove tedious process, all the way up to addressing your most complex challenges and inspection types.
- Accela Fire Prevention’s pre-built components incorporate insights from working with fire departments across the country, so you can take advantage of targeted training, documentation, and proven processes and workflows.
Ready to save valuable time and resources while increasing service levels and productivity? You can learn more here or contact an Accela rep today about how to meet your department’s toughest challenges with Accela Fire Prevention.
